iLearn Technology

What it is: As I mentioned a few days ago, I am starting a virtual classroom/club for digital storytelling.  I have been on the lookout for great resources, I listed my favorites here, and now I am remembering a lot of tools I left off of my original list (like Toon Doo!).  Today as I was going through my Google Reader, I learned about this gem from Richard Byrne’s Free Tech for Teachers.  The Delaware Art Museum has provided a great website dedicated to storytelling.  The tagline is “bringing visual art to life through stories”.  On the site, students can picture a story, experience a story, or tell a story.  The Picture a Story was the most intriguing portion for me, as it provides a great tool for telling a digital story.  First, students choose a genre of story that they want to tell, next they choose a famous painting background for their story, students add characters (also from famous works of art), props, and then tell the story.  In the tell the story section, students type out the story.  If a microphone is available, students can even record the story in their own voice.  When students have completed their story, it can be shared via email.

How to integrate Picture a Story into your curriculum: Stories are powerful.  I love the way that Picture a Story weaves together famous works of art with story.  It teaches students to reflect on the art that they encounter and think about the stories that it represents. Picture a Story is a great way to discuss genre, characters, and parts of a story.  It is also a fantastic way to bring a little art history into your classroom.  It would be a neat class experiment to have students choose all the same genre, background, characters, and props and, without talking to others, write their story.  After students are finished they can share their stories with the class.  Students will learn about perspective, creativity, and voice as they listen to all the different stories that originated from the same picture.  If you don’t have access to a computer lab, this activity could be done with an interactive whiteboard or projector connected computer and students writing on paper.  Let your students experiment with story and share their finished pieces with each other.  Picture a story is ideal in a lab setting where each student has access to their own computer.  If that isn’t a possibility, you could also have students visit Picture a Story on classroom computers as a storytelling center.  The site is quick to navigate through and students can tell a story in a sentence or a few paragraphs making it a good center.  If students don’t have access to email or can’t email the finished product to you, have them take a screenshot of the story to save in a digital portfolio or to print out.

Tips: The teacher section of this site has some great lesson ideas for every grade level.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Picture a Story in your classroom!

What it is: Jackson Pollock was an influential American painter and a big name in the abstract expressionist movement.  Recently,  I was reminded about the Jackson Pollock Whiteboard interactive from the wonderful  Techie Classroom blog.   This website allows students to create Jackson Pollock-esque virtual paintings.  Students click anywhere on the screen for splatters of paint, drops, and dribbles.  As they are “painting”, students can press any key on the keyboard for a different background color, erase using the space bar, press alt+ any key to change the color of the drip, or use numbers 1-0 or left, right, up, or down arrow to change the color of the drip or background.  Jackson Pollock by Miltos Manetas is also an iPhone and iPod Touch application.

How to integrate Jackson Pollock Whiteboard into the classroom: This site is just plain fun!  Students will enjoy creating abstract works of art by clicking and moving around the virtual page.  Obviously this would be a great way to introduce students to abstract art and to Jackson Pollock, students could start by creating here, and then study Jackson Pollock and his famous paintings.  Put the Jackson Pollock website up on your interactive whiteboard and let your class create a Pollock masterpiece throughout the day.  Take a screen shot of the finished painting at the end of the day/class period.  This could be done every day over a week or month.  At the end of the week/month collect all of your classroom virtual paintings into a slide show.  Do the finished paintings convey the emotions of the days?  The slide show of paintings could also be used as a backdrop for information that students learned on their Jackson Pollock study.

Students Pollock masterpieces can be used for adding some color to the classroom walls, as a desktop picture or screen saver, or as thank you notes for classroom helpers.

Tips: In the iPod/iPhone version of the Jackson Pollock Whiteboard, multi-touch capabilities are built in for even more fun!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Jackson Pollock Whiteboard in your classroom.

What it is:  Aviary is a website on a mission to make creativity more accessible.  They do this by making powerful image software available online (no download required) and with free versions of the online software.  Aviary has four different offerings: Peacock, Phoenix, Toucan, and Raven.  Because each tool does something different, I am going to break it down into four posts.

Raven is the final application in the Aviary suite.  Raven is a vector editor.  Those familiar with graphic design will appreciate this tool because vector art is fully scalable (it doesn’t pixelate or distort when size is changed).  Vector art is most commonly used in logo creation.  Raven allows students to learn about and work with paths, lines, curves, and objects.  Students will have control over stroke, fill color, and gradient. Just like in Aviary Phoenix, students can work with layers, groups, and layer masks.  Raven also allows for import of other vector graphic files (SVG).  

How to integrate Raven into the classroom:   Aviary Raven is an amazing application and the fact that it is web based makes it infinitely more impressive.  Use Raven to teach students about graphic design, vector art, pixels, and digital art.  Allow students to experiment with different fills and gradients to create shadow and light on objects that they create.  

Tips:  Aviary Raven is the only application in the suite that is currently in alpha version and costs money, $9.99/month gives you pro access to the complete Aviary suite.   Be sure to check out the many tutorials to learn how to use Raven and all of the Aviary applications.  Encourage students to do the same…it is a great way to learn!

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Aviary Raven  in your classroom.

What it is:  Aviary is a website on a mission to make creativity more accessible.  They do this by making powerful image software available online (no download required) and with free versions of the online software.  Aviary has four different offerings: Peacock, Phoenix, Toucan, and Raven.  Because each tool does something different, I am going to break it down into four posts.

Toucan is the third application in the Aviary suite.  Toucan is a color palette chooser. It is a simple tool but combined with the other Aviary applications is pretty powerful for the creativity process.  Choose colors for your palette and then adjust hue, saturation, hue, light, CMYK, and RGB.  The color palette helps students learn about relationships between colors on the color wheel.  As students manipulate and choose colors from the color wheel, they can save to the clip board.  When color palettes are in the clipboard, students can filter out colors in their palette or expand colors.  There is also an image chooser where students can choose an image and then pick colors directly from the image.  The last cool tool in Toucan is a color deficiency tool where you can see what people who are color blind might see when they are viewing your color palette (especially helpful for website creation!).  After you create a color palette, it can be imported into Pheonix or Peacock.  In the color chooser in Pheonix, you can click a special button to import your swatches from Toucan.  Neat!

How to integrate Toucan into the classroom:   Aviary Toucan is a wonderful addition to any art or science class studying color.  The color wheel and adjustment options make it easy to see and understand color relationships as well as concepts like hue, tint, and saturation.  This would be a great tool for students to explore individually, recording observations about hue, tint, saturation, etc. as they discover how each affects color.  Toucan would also be useful for whole class instruction on color with a projector.  The ability to create color palettes is a great tie in for the other Aviary applications as well as for website design.  I love the color deficiency tool that allows you to see what the colors in your color palette look like to someone with color blindness.  This is a nice way to teach students about color blindness and useful when creating websites, advertisements, etc.  

Tips:  Aviary Phoenix, Peacock, and Toucan are both in beta right now.  Be sure to check out the Toucan overview video to learn more about how Toucan works.  The video breaks down the application nicely.  

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Aviary Toucan  in your classroom.

I hope that you all had a blessed Christmas!  What I learned this year is that even though I take a break from posting, spammers do NOT break for holidays and other bloggers tend to blog MORE when they have a break to do so.  This means that #1 I have a lot of spam to sort through and #2 it has taken me a long time to get through my Google Reader!  I am finally getting around to a post that I intended to do several days ago (actually 3 posts) all on the Aviary creative suite of tools.  So, without further ado- here it is…

What it is:  Aviary is a website on a mission to make creativity more accessible.  They do this by making powerful image software available online (no download required) and with free versions of the online software.  Aviary has four different offerings: Peacock, Phoenix, Toucan, and Raven.  Because each tool does something different, I am going to break it down into four posts.

Peacock is a “visual laboratory”that lets students experiment with pixel based images in fun ways.  Students can create pixel images applying filters (this will feel similar to other image editors such as Adobe).  Students can also blend several pixel based images together to create images.  These pixel images would make great backgrounds for other documents, web pages, or other Aviary tools.  Students can also upload “resources” or pictures from their computers or other sources to manipulate in Peacock.   Peacock easily integrates with the other Aviary tools switching images quickly between the applications.  This makes the possibilities for creativity endless.  

How to integrate Peacock into the classroom:   Aviary Peacock is a neat way for students to explore and experiment with visual arts.  The application really does feel like a laboratory.  Students start out with one image of their choosing and can manipulate the image with different filters, blenders, etc. to come up with completely new images.  It is interesting to experiment with the different ‘ingredients’ to see how an image can be transformed.  Peacock can be used to create backgrounds for web pages, documents, or other Aviary creations.  Peacock can also be used to help students understand cause and effect as they manipulate images.  

Tips:  Aviary Phoenix and Peacock are both in beta right now.  Be sure to check out the Peacock overview video to get an idea of how Peacock works.  

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Aviary Peacock  in your classroom.