Digital Art

All students throughout secondary school experience the use of digital tools for creating artwork. I'm regularly amazed at speed which they learn new techniques and skills. Under the expert guidance of our Art teacher, Mr Daniel, students create quality work, often high levels of creativity.

The piece below is the work of Alyssa (Yr9) and is a lovely example of what can be produced with the aid of a computer.

Photo Editing

Having a digital camera (iPad) to hand all day has many advantages (see previous post), but the majority of photos taken are merely 'snap-shots' - functional but not necessarily creative. Year 7 have been learning how to improve the photos they take. So far this has been achieved in two ways.

1. Take a better picture.
To achieve this they have learned about the way a camera works and how the image is captured. An understanding of shutter speed, light levels, metering etc is essential in understanding the limitations of your device, and also guiding your decisions when choosing location, angle, light etc.

2. Edit to enhance
While we've not gone overly creative just yet, students are now using editing tools to make their good pictures better. This could involve changes to brightness, contrast, colour correction, lifting shadows and cropping. Some of these adjustments could be very subtle, with minor enhancements being made.

Occasionally we can go a little bit beyond enhancement, and move more towards transformation of the image. The example below shows how one fairly ordinary image can become quite striking with just a few simple edits. The majority of students edit directly on their iPad, using either the iPhoto or PicShop apps.

Tales of the Unexpected

Sometimes kids surprise us. They often demonstrate the ability to see tasks from a different perspective or they have ideas that we as adults/teachers had not considered. This especially so when it comes to technology.

An example of this happen just happened in a library lesson. The students were in small groups and had been given the task of reading the same book. They then had to summarise the story in the form of a Rap. Our Teacher Librarian expected a set of lyrics that would hopefully be performed with a few finger-click or hand-claps as accompaniment. The result was somewhat different. As the lyrics were being written, many students turned to their iPads for inspiration, and the phrase "There's an app for that" proved itself to be true once again. In the week that Apple announced that there are over 1 million apps available for iPad, it's not surprising really that there are a whole host of useful apps for Rap writers & performers.

The student's creativity shone through, with the support of the right technology to improve the whole process. I can't wait to see what results they come up with next week.

Spanish Lesson

I was in a Spanish lesson this morning and was interested by the activity the students were doing. They've been learning the names for rooms and common features of houses and homes. Their task is to present their learning in any way they like. Around the room students were working in a wide variety of ways, using different methods - some involving technology, some not. In the picture below, two girls are creating a 3D house in SketchUp, which will be labelled and presented in digital form. The other two have gone completely down the hand-made route with drawings, scissors, glue and hand-written labels. I just love seeing lessons where the kids get to choose what tools they use and where they can go with whatever they feel fits best for the task. The technology just becomes another tool to select as needed.