A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary
Goollery is a site that documents the many projects that have been created using google-related applications. Below is an example of one such use where the user has created alphabet shapes using Google Earth. Please click here to visit the Gollery site.
Love this response by one of my A2 Photography students, Amaryllis Garland, to the work of Laura Letinsky and her exam theme ‘discord’. You can see more of her work here.
The tradition genre of still life often bores students rigid, but by using more contemporary artists, the world of objects becomes far more interesting. I particularly like the work of Peter Fischli & David Weiss and Alina Szapocznikow, who is currently showing the The Photographers Gallery in London.
This is a beta application called 280 slides that has all the signs of being an excellent free online piece of software that acts like keynote or powerpoint allowing you to create presentations online and post them to sites such as slideshare. Microsoft are already working on a free online version of word – however, there are already a growing number of open source applications such as Google Docs that are already offering free online word processing that MS are a bit behind …for a change.
The above image was made through controlled voice sounds – by alternating the pitch and tone or your voice, you can literally draw an image. Click here to visit the application designed by zefrank.
This video is an example of how it is being used as a form of live performance art:
This image has been simply manipulated using Tiltshift maker – this can also be achieved easily in Photoshop using a duplicated layer applied with a blur and the area of focus removed with the rubber tool, and then applied a high contrast/saturation using levels.
This program is unique in that you don’t need to enter your personal details to make print outs of comic strips. It allows you to write in foreign languages so could be effectively used in MFL. It has many links to other sites to support with translation and ideas on story telling. Overall a simple, but useful resource – despite the dodgy title.
I am torn between migrating over to the new Picasa online photo sharing/management software, which has recently come out for the Mac, and maintaining Flickr as a default online photo sharing site for students. There are clear advantages to Flickr in terms of sharing through groups and the ability to categorise into collections and sets. However, I like the ease of Picasa in being able to sync albums from its desktop programme, making it easy to publish work from within your web album on your hard drive. Here is an example of an embedded album, which I have created in order to showcase different photographers that could be researched for a GCSE photography project called ‘Visual Noise’:
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| VISUAL NOISE Artist Research |
So far, I have required students to have a Flickr account as an e-portfolio. This has worked well as an online showcase, but not enabled students to add more critical analysis of other photographers and interests to their site such as with a blog like this one. Therefore, this year my GCSE Photography students have created their own blogs using Edublogs – see blog roll below:
These have been successful as each blog has an RSS feed and can easily be collated within Google Reader or on a learning platforms such as Moodle or the London MLE run by Fronter. This year, I have decided to formally submit the blog as evidence of analysis and use the sketchbook as evidence for visual development and the occasional annotations.
I have yet to play with Fronter’s Webfronter, which enables students to create a web page, but this might replace the Edublogs sites if it has enough capacity. It would be good to centralise these blogs within Fronter, but I doubt that there will be the same capacity of ease of use.
To The End Of The Pencil And The Edge Of The Page from Green Thing on Vimeo.
A great way to encourage kids to use the whole page in their sketchbook! Some great doodles.
I have been using slideshare for a while now, which I think is a great a Web 2.0 application, however, I was recently referred to ISSUU by Edlinks for Learning- Learning 2.0 for Pakistan. It allows you to create and share online magazines. Here’s a preview:
