Photo usage & editing in the classroom

When it comes to using computer programs in the class to help kids learn, I hadn't actually realized just how effective simple photo-editing might be, and there's several different reasons why I think so. Rather than simply increasing a student's ability and understanding of the usage of software or of photography, there are also other skills that photo-editing can increase that are not nearly as direct or obvious. I believe that photo-editing can boost a student's creativity, problem-solving skills, ability to understand alternate perceptions, and even how to properly critique and compare ideas.


Creativity: Photo-editing is not a streamlined process, it is something that can go in any direction a person wants, and often people have different ideas of what they can do when it comes to the actual process.
For instance, by looking at the photos in the flickr group for the education class that I am in, it seemed that each person brought their own perception of what it meant to "edit a picture. Some people took a picture and simply edited the pictures attributes, such as contrast, brightness, colors, etc. Others used effects in the pictures in order to maximize a specific idea in the picture (such as creating borders around a picture that were shaped to draw the eye to something). One person combined pairs of pictures to create an illusion between the two (for instance, a pair of pictures, both with girls reach out their arms to a railing, and combined to make it look like the same railing). And I personally just took items out of one picture, and edited those items into other pictures to make it appear as if it were actually present there.
After students are given the broad subject of simply going and "editing pictures," each brings back their own ideas of what that means. By then grouping the pictures and seeing the different things they could have done, a student could then understand just how creative they can be with a picture. They can go in almost an infinite amount of directions, and it seems up to them to decide what to do. This is a huge step in the creativity process, and photo-editing simply allows easy ways to access the creativity process in general.

Problem-solving: Surprisingly enough, photo-editing requires a certain amount of problem-solving skills. A person may have a specific goal in mind when tampering with a picture, but they don't know what specific tools or steps to take to reach that goal. They then need to fiddle around with the program to reach their goal, and sometimes they might utilize non-standard methods to reach their goal. For instance, when I was editing a picture in which I put a cat into a car, I had to figure out how to either take the window out and bring out everything behind it (as it had been dimmed down from being on the other side of the glass), or to make the car appear as if it were also behind the glass. After searching around for a solution I eventually just edited the opacity of the cat (which makes it more or less see-through), to make it appear dimmer, and therefor as if it were behind the glass.
With a program like photoshop, a person can know that just about anything is possible with a picture, it's just a matter of figuring out how to actually do something, and if a person learns to simply be patient and persistent with the program, they can problem-solve their way to any goal they wish to achieve.

Understanding alternate perceptions: I think that this goes beyond a person's creativity, and instead drives more towards the idea of understanding new angles. Besides simply seeing a student's work and understanding new directions of creativity for a picture, editing pictures enables students to understand much broader ideas in society. For instance, by learning how easy it can be to manipulate an image, a person can learn to second-guess many images they might see in places to understand that they might have been altered to give the viewer a specific illusion. For instance, the picture that was made by two separate pictures, each of one of two different girls, that were then combined to look like one big picture that they were both in at the same time, would give the illusion that there was a third person in the party of two girls that was actually there to hold the camera and take the picture. In reality this idea would be false, since it was set up so that one girl would pose while the other would take the picture of her, and then the other way.
Another way a new perspective could be gained is by looking at the before and after images of specific pictures. There is one picture in the group of the beach at seaside that is listed as "outside our room." The picture is largely blue with a grey border and a single illuminated building in a corner. I could see this as actually being a great picture for an advertisement. The picture illustrated the beauty and serenity of the setting, while also causing the eye to be drawn to the light-up room, where it seems as if there is a party going on. The contrast between the blue setting and the orange building, that the eye is drawn to by the border, creates a fantastic image of a perfect vacation locale that would have anyone wanting to visit there to enjoy the nightlife. Now at this point a person might be able to look at the original picture, which might not be nearly as romanticized (if this were a very-well edited picture, which it could be), and the picture might actually appear to be much more bland than a prospective customer may hope for. If a student could be walked through this process then it could lead directly into a lesson on advertisement and the psychology that goes behind it. This idea could be duplicated for photos that are edited to become much more emotion (thereby helping a student understand the psyche behind what drives human emotions or sympathy for others), propaganda, and much more. Giving the student the ability to sit down and create these effects for themselves would help them to better understand much more difficult pathways of thinking.

Critiquing & comparing ideas: Coming down from the "creativity" idea, where each student would initially bring some sort of different perspective on what it means to edit a picture, students could then learn how to properly critique a person's work from their own perspective in a positive fashion. I'm not saying that this is the only way this could be done, I'm just saying that this would be a great time for it.
For instance, when talking about the "advertisement" picture above, I wouldn't be surprised if the person who took the picture and edited it never even thought of it as being something used in an ad. When I look at it however, that's what I see, and I could then share with them my perspective on it, which then might open up an entirely new perspective on the matter. Photo-editing is something that has so many different aspects that can be brought to it, that it is outright necessary for a person to communicate with others in order to understand how to fully master all the different parts of visual-manipulation. Without positive criticism, a person is unable to move forward. A teacher could have their students do an activity like the one we did in class, and then tell their students to critique each others work in a constructive manner, outlining what that would be. And while this might be difficult for some students (as they simply might not have any great ideas for others), there's always something easy to identify, even at the most basic levels, when it comes to beginner photo-editing. And by doing this not only would a student have to learn how to critique people in a proper fashion, but they would also learn that in society, being able to take criticism and learn from it is a necessary skill as well.


I would go further into ideas on how these different ideas could be implemented in class, an I'm also certain that there are other ways that photo-editing could be used in education that I hadn't touched on, but at this point I feel that I'd rather not out-write my reader's attention span, and will leave my blog entry as-is. So with that I will point out that after thinking about it and writing on the topic, I would love to be able to use photo-editing some day in the classroom. There are far more possible-benefits for it then I could have imagined. So thanks for reading!

Technology in the classroom - Utility vs Useless

In many ways technology is nothing but a filler in the classroom, as I remember days when teachers would take us down to the computer lab almost just as a way to kill time (or at least that's how it felt), or the computers in my elementary classes were really only used on days when it was raining for playing the Oregon Trail on. It can be difficult to make a correlation for students between computers and tools, rather than computers and toys, since largely at such a young age, that's really all that they are. But as difficult as it is, it's certainly not impossible.

The first step would be to teach students the usefulness of computers or the internet, and this can be done in a couple of ways. What I was thinking, would be to assign a list of different tasks that needed to be done, and then let the students find out which program or site would be used to solve that task (such as find a web database of a specific kind, edit an image file, even how to create a word document (if they are a young enough age), and many more, in order for them to find out how wide a range of tools that a computer can possess and how easy those tools can be to access.

The second step (in my opinion) would be to closely monitor their computer use for the first few weeks at school, making guidelines for them to follow and ensuring that they stay away from specific sites (possibly like Facebook or browsing YouTube, which can become an instant distraction). By making sure that they get into an established routine of knowing that they are there for WORK, and not for play, they can start seeing computer use in a new manner.
This, to me, was the big problem many teachers had throughout my K-12 experience on computers. Often as students were working on computers, even with teachers in the class, they would find something they liked while following directions, and then stick with it the rest of class, getting deviated off the original path. For instance one time a friend and I were told to go to a site similar to "AskJeeves," but when we got there we found out we could look up other things that people were searching for, and essentially spent the rest of class time looking at those (still to this day we both remember seeing someone searching up how to buy a machine gun for a submarine, and that was over 10 years ago).

A third step to take would be to keep things new  with technology, to keep things fresh. According to the standards with technology, there is a lot of comparison between technology and creativity/versatility. If, as a teacher, you get stuck too much on one part of technology (such as falling in love with Prezi and not using anything else), then you are entirely failing in that aspect. Technology is about constant fluctuation, there are newer and betters apps/processes being thrown out into the world every day, and to be a part of it you need to be able to keep an open mind. And if you are constantly changing the way you use things in the classroom, or assign constantly-changing assignments/problems to students when it comes to the internet, they will understand this concept and be more willing to be accepting of what technology has to offer. It's not easy (as I've already found myself falling behind), but it's certainly doable, at least if teachers band together to help each other out.

To me, these are the most important parts of what a teacher needs to do to keep technology useful in the classroom. Make sure students understand the tools that are given to them, make sure they understand that when using technology, it is a time for work, not for fun, and lastly to make sure they understand that technology is constantly in shift and being "redefined," so that they can join in with this shift and even benefit from the creativity it offers. I firmly believe that technology can be a major resource for future classrooms, and not just simply a filler for students on a rainy day.

My Classroom Website (sample)

I doubt this will be the actual website I use when I actually do have a classroom of my own, as I would prefer to use a website with more options and put more time behind it, but this is instead simply a sample of what I think would be a few good ideas to use in a website designated to your class.

My website

At this point it leans more towards the side of being silly than serious, but in the long run I think that's a healthy thing.