Technology TIGS

• You have been asked to design a series of internet advertisements to promote general tourism to the Illawarra Region. The client has provided you with a series of photographs taken around the region, which you will use as a basis of the artwork for your advertisements. You may change, modify, adapt, blend, mix, slice, layer, or use these photographs in any way you see fit. These images will be available from the Internet. It is anticipated that you will make use of animated gifs produced by Photoshop or free software that creates animated gifs.

• You will also need to come up with a slogan or catchphrase to promote the Illawarra Region, and this slogan, along with the words “Illawarra” must be included somewhere in your advertisement. You may add any other text you wish, so long as the above minimum criteria is met. (animated).

• You must create at least 10 different graphics, using at least 3 different standard banner sizes. Your graphics need to be visually related to each other (ie, so they form a “set”, with common identifiable features that tie them together as part of the same advertising campaign.) You may create more than one “set” of graphics providing that you meet the above criteria. (ie, you might have two sets of 5 graphics, or three sets made of 3+ graphics, etc) [animate].

• The advertisements should be designed to encourage general tourism. Both the Illawarra name and your slogan should be clearly communicated in each advertisement. The client is looking for creativity in design, strong communication of the Illawarra as a tourism destination, and a consistent visual look and feel for each ad set. (animated).

• Finished images are to be created at 72 pixels/inch and saved as gif files. Upload the finished images to your blog, combining each set into a different post (not pages). Ideally, the teacher will check your blog site to mark the animated tasks.

• The finished work must be stored on your working directory and to your blog site if possible.

Any questions, please ask. The computer labs may be used during recess and lunch to work on your specific tasks.

Click to enlarge

Here are two clever samples of animated gifs. MS Gif Animator may be downloaded for free. (Do a google search).

Sample 1: Puppet Person
Sample 2: Body Boarding

Blogs in education are still a pretty new idea and many teachers are exploring ways that they might be used to make learning more relevant and interesting for you. I like to try new things in teaching and I will be trying to develop activities where a blog can be used. Like you, I will be learning and trying out different things. A lot of my beginning ideas for the use of this blog site comes from another Australian teacher whose name is Chris Betcher.

Feel free to blog whenever the mood strikes you. Jot down your thoughts and ideas, your responses to what you learn. Share your thoughts with others. Add links to website or articles you find that might be of interest to the group. Take time to read the other class blogs on the link list and please leave comments for each other. The two-way nature of this blogging medium is very powerful!

As with all things new, we will make a few mistakes along the way… two steps forward, one step backward as you have already found out.

I hope you enjoy this experience! Mr. Madsen

As you are hopefully discovering, Photoshop can make you doubt what you see… by adding, deleting, changing an image, it can fool us into seeing things as they really aren’t!

Check out these out:

• http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/lavey.asp
• http://www.snopes.com/photos/iceberg.asp
• http://www.snopes.com/photos/lili.asp

Too obvious? What about fashion magazines? Surely THEY wouldn’t lie to us?

Write a comment below responding to each website. What do you think about the use of digital image editing tools like Photoshop to modify images? How much is too much? How easy is it to fool the reader?

Copy your response into your own blog as well.

This short task includes: making use of your skills using graphics software and graphical techniques to create relevant images for a related series. You will make use of your talents to create content that is aimed at young teenagers and the content should not be BORING. This task is to be carried out individually but please help each other out during class.

Using Photoshop Elements (or your favourite graphics software), create at least 3 collage images of yourself somewhere in the world. Use Google Images (or some other image finding tool) to collect some background images which you can place yourself in front of. To keep reasonable quality, make sure you use only large images.

Next, use a digital camera to take photos of yourself that can be edited, cut, resized, etc, into a new layer, and place them over the background to make it look like you are actually in the picture. Take note of lighting, position, etc, to make it look as real as you can. One may bring in photos and scan them.

Save all final images as a JPG, as well as a native Photoshop Elements file.

A. Place the collage images of yourself into a PowerPoint Presentation. With each image, insert an audio event of no longer than 15 seconds. Save everything to your working directory and to your thumb drive. 20 Marks

Part A is due Term 1, Friday Week 3, 2008.

B. Next resize the images to around 600 pixels as the largest dimension. Add text to the composite image. Save the images as a JPG to your working directory and your thumb drive. Upload your images to your blog site that you have previously created. 20 Marks

Part B is Due: Term 1, Friday Week 6, 2008.

Mr. Madsen (Note this is an extract from the printed task sheet).

Your blogs are public. Your work can be seen by anyone on the web. For this reason, it’s pretty important that we follow some sensible guidelines for putting ourselves “out there”…

1. Your blogs are really just online extensions of our classroom. Speech that is not appropriate for class is not appropriate for your blog either. While you are strongly encouraged to engage in debate and conversation with other bloggers, we also expect that you will conduct yourself in a manner representative of your school.
2. Never EVER EVER give out or record personal information on our blog. Your blog exists as a public space on the Internet. Don’t share anything that you don’t want the world to know. For your safety, be careful what you say, too. Don’t give out your last name, your phone number or your home address. This is particularly important to remember if you have a personal online journal or blog elsewhere.
3. Again, your blog is a public space. And if you put it on the Internet, odds are really good that it will stay on the Internet. Always. That means ten years from now when you are looking for a job, it might be possible for an employer to discover some really hateful or immature things you said when you were younger and more prone to foolish things. Be sure that anything you write you are proud of. It can come back to haunt you if you don’t.
4. Never link to something you haven’t read. While it isn’t your job to police the Internet, when you link to something, you should make sure it is something that you really want to be associated with. If a link contains material that might be creepy or make some people uncomfortable, you should probably try a different source.

All quite reasonable rules really… (adapted from these)

Some of you may make use of other blog sites, and I can’t really tell you what to do on those.  For your school one though, it’d be great if you could stick to the guidelines above.

Thanks to Mr. Chris Betcher who alerted me to the source of these guidelines.
Mr. Madsen

Welcome to tas.tigs.com.au. We have chosen this site because it specialises in education which means things should be more secure for a student. You will need to go to this site and create a blog account of your own. This means you will have to use a genuine email address. Choose a nickname for a username. After you have done that, we need to subscribe you to this site. Please do not abuse this information system. Mr. Madsen