Digital Image Editing March 6, 2007
Posted by Brian in : Exc.el BLogs, GLOW, Uncategorized, digital imaging, social media, teachmeet, web 2.0 , 5commentsAt the last GLOW mentors in service day I was part of a team with Dr Robin Strain and Tess Watson tasked to come up with an in service on digital imaging.
The idea of the course is for staff to acquaint themselves with the hardware and software needed to start working with digital images.
Part of the course will cover basic editing of images. Not all the PC’s in East Lothian schools have editing software installed therefore for everyone to be able to carry out this function a good online editor had to be found.
There are a few out there so I thought I would run through the features of some of them and ask for any others that people would recommend.
A very basic picture editor that lets you resize, crop, rotate, adjust brightness, saturation and hue. Its advantages are that
- no registration required
- it has unlimited undo and redo.
- can handle large files (up to 10mb).
- imports from anywhere on the web.
- handles all file formats.
- can save edited photos to your own flickr account.
With its large, easy to use, buttons this could come in very handy in primary schools and will definitely merit a mention in the final in service presentation.
PXN8 is a very feature rich photo editing application and whilst it may not have the same visual appeal as Snipshot it does let you do a bit more.
- zoom in and out.
- use filters to enhance photos i.e remove red eye, whiten teeth.
- spirit level function to straighten up pictures.
- fun features such as snow, text and charcoal effects.
This is another excellent online application that should make the cut. It offers a bit more than snipshot and may be popular with those wishing to experiment with photo editing.
Phixr is an application that we came across on the day of the GLOW mentors in service and it seemed to tick all the boxes but recently I have had difficulty in getting it to work. It now works well due to the hard work and excellent customer service from the guys at Phixr.
- no need to register with session time of up to 2 hours.
- preview effects before applying.
- variety of effects and photo overlay option.
- email the photo from Phixr itself, or upload it to Flickr, FotoPic, Photobucket, Fotolog, Buzznet, DropShots and LiveJournal.
This was the leading contender. Problems with the website may, however,put this one on hold for the time being.
This is the leading contender thanks to the hard work put in by the guys at Phixr who have managed to get it working in our schools. Excellent customer focus.
If you want to try any of these site out then just click on their logo. Let me know what you think of them and which you think would be most apt for use in schools.
Also if you have come across a good photo editing site then please again let me know and the team will evaluate it for its inclusion in the forthcoming Teachmeet roadshows.
Happy editing.
GLOWing in Tranent February 5, 2007
Posted by Brian in : GLOW, Uncategorized, teachmeet , 3commentsI was at Tranent primary on Friday for a GLOW mentors day.
The idea of the day was to plan our Teachmeet Roadshows sessions and to formulate strategies for rolling them out in East Lothian schools.
The ability to competently handle digital images will be important when GLOW is up and running as a lot of social media applications are image friendly.It’s a great way of sharing good practice, seeing what others have been up to and how such things can help improve learning and teaching processes. Also its very good fun.
After a briefing from Karen and Ewan we were given various little tasks to accomplish. We familiarised ourselves with bubbleshare which is a bobby dazzler of a programme used for making annotated slideshows of pictures uploaded from digital cameras or the internet. You can see my efforts here.
Before lunch we were given a choice of subjects to participate in the afternoon session.
They were digital imaging for secondary schools, podcasts, animation, film and blogging.
I volunteered for digital imaging topic and worked alongside Tess and Robin to come up with ideas for a two hour inservice to eventually be rolled out to East Lothian schools.
Over the next couple of hours we searched for online sites where digital images can be simply edited online thus removing the necessity of having specialist image editing software installed on any computer.
We started on a timeline and then fleshed out the bare bones of our ideas before taking part in a half hour wash up session where the respective groups discussed their own projects.
Our task couldn’t be finished on the day so Tess, Robin and myself will collaborate and hopefully get everything tied up soon.
I would just want to say thanks to Ewan, Karen and the rest of the team for organising an excellent day. I learnt an amazing amount in a very short time.
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