Photoshop

In my web design class I teach Adobe GoLive, Photoshop and Flash. I have taught this class now for four years this is one of my favorite classes that I teach because the programs are so much fun and you can be so creative. There is always something new to learn or try and you can experiment with your own ideas. When the students learn Photoshop they not only learn the program, but complete a couple of projects incorporating all of the elements that were taught from the book and then use their own creativity. The students complete a color collage project designed from my visual literacy class. I take them to the park across the street in the fall and assign each of them a color and they have to take pictures of items of that color. Then there is a lesson on color and how it affects mood and expression. From there they create their collage and write about what mood/expression is evoked from the collage. Also, they bring in pictures of their younger years all the way through high school and design a photo collage, which I have printed in color for them. Finally, they create an electronic portfolio at the end and add all of the projects created during the school year into a website which are burned to a CD so they can take it with them.

In teaching the programs it is difficult when someone is absent and one idea that I thought of while recording an editing feature in Camtasia for our project is being able to upload the video to my webpage and the student can then watch it and learn on their own time. This way they do not have to worry about coming in at a certain time during the day and then I can help answer their questions instead of reteaching the material several times. For this assignment I will demonstrate how to cut an image out of a picture and place on another picture. In addition, I show how to use layers with adding a background color and a border.