GIMP/Photoshop Tutorial 

Computer Lab 

WEEK 9 (July 2)

GIMP design Tutorial: Layers, tools, saving, DPI/Pixels, importing images, cutting out images, transparencies

 I have been needing to learn Photoshop for myself and my teaching for quite a few years, and I am so happy that I finally did it! I think that GIMP is a fairly good free alternative to photoshop. Although it wasn’t very intuitive sometimes and the tools didn’t always work well,  and that was frustrating.

 The computer tech who taught the course suggested that in the classroom we should focus on process and not let technology issues keep us from working on projects with students. Students will always have different camera phones, or digital cameras, or non at all, and all of them may need to pull images off internet. He recommended that low quality images can still produce a good result and students are usually happy with outcome, especially if you focus on the process.

He moved fairly quickly and gave a solid basic understanding, which worked for most people, but a few people’s computer’s were not working well and so those people got behind and were totally frustrated and basically gave up because it was driving them totally crazy. And they were disappointed because they really wanted and needed to learn the program. It reminded me almost exactly of one of my worst moments during my teaching practicum when a few of the students were having meltdowns when their computers were not working with the free blog software we were using. Despite the fact that I was amazingly prepared, and trained by the teacher librarian, and gave a sample presentation on the overhead project before, there were surprise gliches. The students who were upset started misbehaving and distracting other students and getting them to look at shopping online, and it was a session my faculty was observing on top of it all! I managed to patch things up with these students the next day by acknowledging how annoying that must have been (at the recommendation of my faculty, and it worked brilliantly since they really came on board with me for the rest of the semester). 

I recognize that this will be an ongoing issue to deal with as we integrate technology into the classroom more and more. Also our technology in the schools is generally much slower and more limiting than what some of the students are used to working on at home, so there will be frustration there too. I think the lesson here is to be upfront about it and to prepare for some technical issues as best as you can, and otherwise acknowledge it and move on. I think the use of technology that is appropriate and engaging for students and for learning is really important - we need to stay on top of trends to be able to understand and communicate with students, while also offering them opportunities that others have to the best of our ability. 

I think that a good approach to extensions and technology is to build a really good basic foundation, and then let the kids run with it. I found that most of them are just dying to whiz through things - they are like race horses itching to be let out of the gate. Creating a handout with steps and criteria worked well for me so students to move ahead and not be held back by the group. Regarding assessment, I found that I graded my students on the fact that they had completed something on the list without grading the quality of the design. I did this so that they would be inspired to be creative in their own way, but I was criticized by this approach because then I’m not grading based on whether they did something well, just that they did it at all. They said that I can get poor quality that way, but I’m still conflicted about assessing quality with art since since it is somewhat subjective, despite a good rubric.  And a final product of some sort will be produced, so summative assessment can be based on the criteria. However the quality of the product will greatly vary. 

Some students with exceptionalities will likely blossom with the use of technology, however one of the student’s I had in my practicum that was gifted was really bored since they were working in partners, and he took it as an opportunity to read a graphic novel while his partner essentially did all the work. He was way too under stimulated by the partner work so he sort of gave up before they even got too far into it. I also had a high percentage, at least 30%, of ELL students, and one deaf student, so I made sure to have all the steps and criteria printed out for people, and also available on the computers. I found that considering ELL students and those with exceptionalities helped to bring the quality of my lessons and preparation up substantially. It was a great standard for differentiated learning.