Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Engaging students through Photoshop.

In the MOOC, Adobe Training for the Trainer,  week three we are to reflect about "how to encourage educators to engage students through Photoshop.  Many students find Photoshop editing a fun activity and a "neat thing" to learn.  I find that they are always engaged when they are learning.  In fact for World Arts day in the Middle School, I will do a workshop that helps students learn the basics of layers, selecting and simple color matching by placing their faces into famous works of art, this is always a hit.

I think it is a matter of helping teachers design projects or adapt current projects for use in Photoshop. Creating collages and posters, for example, can now become digital.  A former colleague used to do an "About Me" project where students started with a photo of themselves and created a collage to describe how the world sees them, or how they would like to be seen by the world.  I can see that in a Health class or English class as a visual poem.

I have also helped students create their own logos for a social justice project using photoshop (yes illustrator is probably better but they seem to find photoshop less difficult).  Likewise I have helped students build French buildings of their dreams by putting various pictures together.

As I was reading the forums one teacher discussed how they teach students how to create diagrams with overlays on the pictures, arrows, text etc for their reports.  I never even thought of this but I like the idea especially for science and math classes.  They can create many cycles, diagrams from their own pictures to add a bit of creativity.

Civics classes have created election posters through the use of photoshop.  Students can create magazine covers, cover pages, super impose various pictures through out history that are all about the same theme. The possibilities are endless with just basic knowledge, time to explore and some creativity.