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Journal on Images Unit This was really a unit where I learned a lot from the how the material was presented and what the other students had to say. I already knew much of the material although there were some areas that I spent the time enhancing my skills or trying something that I needed to learn. And even though I have the technical skills, I don’t always have the knowledge about how best to use them in a classroom environment. The discussions on how to best get students to focus on and emphasize content are very interesting to me. I have been faced with Copyright and Fair Use issues for a while now but it wasn’t until this class that I realized how strongly I felt about students being influenced by teachers using materials “haphazardly”. I think most children now do not see anything wrong with using any materials they can get their hands on, and when they see teachers using materials that are photocopied or from the internet, they don’t realize that some of this use may fall under “Fair Use”. It’s quite obvious that teachers know little about this and don’t really talk to students about copyright. The resource links were good and I think everyone learned a lot from them. I have tried to talk to my kids about it, and I mandate that my students provide sources that show permission. It was interesting how valuable all the teachers found the screen capture exercise. This was very helpful for me to find out, and I plan to continue to share this information. I have used it for years and nobody has ever really asked me about it. Sometimes I think they think it’s too complicated – it’s really just a matter of knowing the right program! The exercise of exploring the features of using a digital camera was a good one. It has gotten harder to teach digital cameras because there are so many different ones. I realized that it would be better to approach that learning task from the features and options and have everyone learn specific features/options for their own cameras. There are standard things that everyone should try and know about – zoom, flash, compression, downloads. I was always intimidated by scanners – they were so hard to use when they first came out. Now I find them much easier to use and I think it’s great that you integrate that into the course. All our schools have scanners and they are very underused. Sometimes one person becomes the designated scanner and everyone drops stuff off for them to do. I happen to be that person in my office, although slowly but surely I’m training more people to use it. I didn’t have much luck photographing a hardcopy and wouldn’t recommend that to someone. I noticed that Walmart and many stores have scanners for photographs now – I would think you could scan hardcopy there if you didn’t have a flatbed scanner. We also have a photocopier at work that will scan to a pdf – it’s a fancy feature but more are coming with that. I love it – it’s fast and efficient and I use that more than any other. I have found that getting people to use a graphics program for digital photos makes a big difference in their satisfaction in using digital photos. A few simple things like sizing, cropping and contrast can significantly improve pictures and sometimes make unusable ones usable. Unfortunately we don’t have standard programs installed everywhere or I think more people would use them. Especially now that easier programs are available – it’s no longer Photoshop or bust. There was really a lot of material in this module. I found it to be a lot of work and I already knew many of the technical skills – it must be really daunting for teachers who haven’t used a digital camera, a scanner, a graphic program or done a screen capture. You were right to recommend scheduling time carefully – I’ll bet there’s a few up late tonight!
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