BP9_RILS Comments

Cartoon Craze!

I had the privilege of visiting Trudi Perkin’s RILS exercise on Educator Studio, as well as her blog page, and let me say, I LOVED IT! I took some time to look through all of her material, and explored the tools she used at www.bitstripsforschools.com, and I was very impressed with how she put together this exercise. Please visit her blog to view my comments on her RILS process. It was a great idea and I think Trudi did a wonderful job with it!

QR Code Craziness!

This QR Code will actually take you to my comment on the blog! Cool huh?

QR codes are very cool bar-code type images that you can scan with your smartphone and they will take you just about anywhere. The coolest thing about them is that anyone can generate them. Jamie Baker took this concept and ran with it in her RILS exercise, which she used to explore their usage in sharing student knowledge with one another, among other things. You can view my comments on her awesome RILS exercise here!

Also, for those interested, here is a link to a free QR code generator!

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BP8_Queeky RILS Reflection

Having completed the implementation of my RILS exercise on Queeky, there are a few things I would like to change in future incarnations of the exercise.

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BP7_Queeky: An Artistic Endeavor!

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PE3_Photoshop Dreamscapes

The biggest take away from the video series I watched on Dreamscapes was the use of a few techniques to really create some out of this world imagery.

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PE2_Photoshop Dreamscapes

So I finished watching the Dreamscapes series this morning.

I had gotten through most of it the past two days, but didn’t get a chance to complete the series until this morning. Bert Monroy is an excellent instructor and has some great ideas.

He really inspired me to get up and go try something new.

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PE1_Photoshop Dreamscapes

As some of you may know already, I consider myself a fairly avid photographer. That’s not to say I consider myself a great photographer; just that I love to take the camera out and take photographs. I’ve been using and teaching Photoshop for many years now, and have learned almost exclusively on my own with no formal training. The purpose of my going through this program on Lynda.com was to see a couple of things:

1. How others use Photoshop in a little bit different manner than I’m used to
2. Methods I can incorporate into my instructions for teaching Photoshop in my classroom
3. Techniques and tips I can integrate when working with photographs and creating artwork

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Queeky: Getting Started

So I put together a little PDF to get my students going on Queeky. Hopefully this will eliminate a lot of the headache on implementation day for my RILS and make things run smoothly.

Welcome to Queeky

(PDF, 819 kB)

Click on the link above to view the PDF. It will open in a new window.

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BP 6 RILS Queeky implementation experiences

While doing my research and planning my RILS experience, I conducted a “play-test” of my design to see how things would run. I will be the first to admit that I am not the best traditional artist. My strengths are more in video and photo manipulation, though I love painting and try to practice as much as I can. Continue reading to learn about my experience running my RILS exercise.

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BP 5 RILS Queeky, not geeky, artist collaboration

Queeky.com is home to a collaborative community focused on creating and sharing works of art in a friendly, professional, and healthy online setting. The artists there range from amateurs to professionals, to everything in between (like myself.) The premise here is that you can paint and draw whatever you like and have a community of artists view your work and offer advice and critiques.

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BP 3/4 Erly and PowToon! Right in the kisser!

I was checking out Mark’s blog and reading his review of a site, Erly.com, which allows you to create and post events in a way similar to a photo album. What makes the site unique is that you can log in to this site, then link your photos from almost any social media network, and post them to a large, shared event. His suggested uses were for his students to post photos from their field trips! I think that’s an awesome idea, and I think it could be taken even further too! To check it out, click here!

The social media sites that you can post from to the Erly site.

Beyond the Erly review, I also strolled over to Valerie’s page and took a look at her review for the PowToon site! PowToon is geared toward a business model for presentations. That being said, Valerie mentions that it appears that educational presentations were an afterthought of the product. After watching her video produced in the software, I liked some of the ideas, but also had some reservations about the program. Click here to read more.

Valerie’s screen capture of her PowToon presentation!

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