Week 4 - Image Editing Software

The topic of digital photography and image editing is very fascinating especially in today’s digital world. This week, I’d like to tell about several great free software programs to help you with all your digital imaging needs. In educational settings, these programs can help you prepare your worksheets for class. For example, if you need to copy pages and images from workbooks, instead of using the old-fashioned scissors and glue method, you can scan the pages and then manipulate them in a mess-free way with the following programs. 1) Fast Stone Image Viewer – this is an unbelievable program! This program is especially helpful if you need to edit multiple images (otherwise known as batch processing). For example, it allows you to convert and rename entire folders into multiple formats. It also allows you to crop multiple images and to create Pdf’s and slideshows from multiple images. I use this program mostly for manipulating scanned images. For my research, I scan many articles and I need a way or organizing, renaming, cropping, changing the contrast, and making a PDF out of these images. This is a great tool for this kind of work. 2) The Gimp – the Gimp is basically a freeware alternative to Adobe Photoshop! I use Fast Stone Image Viewer mainly for processing multiple files, but the Gimp is far better for manipulating individual images. (For example, using the paint brush, adding effects etc.). 3) Ifran View – this is a great alternative to Fast Stone Image Viewer. I hope you enjoy experimenting with these programs!

The Google Art Project, Free E-Resources for Education, Saving You Tube Videos and More...

Here are some of the latest posts I’ve read lately about the uses of technology in education. 1) At Free Tech 4 Teachers - The blogger discusses an art activity whereby students are assigned a task to find different artworks and to map out the history of where the artist lived, where the artwork was created, where it is currently housed, and the history of its travels. The blog mentions two very useful resources: A) Google’s Art Project, containing images from art galleries around the world. This is a great resource for researching different artists and their paintings etc. For example in the search bar on the top left, you can enter “Rembrandt” and you’ll get a list of his works housed in different museums, or you can search for “Mona Lisa” and you’ll get the image of the Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci and other artists who painted a variation of this theme. B) Google’s My Maps where you can create your own maps. 2) At E-Learning Industry The blogger provides a list of 53 free e-learning books and resources that are accessible online. For example, you can download a book “Using Media to Engage and Teach” about making videos and animations for education. 3) The Innovative Educator discusses how to access You Tube videos in class even if your internet access is blocked. I think the best idea is simply to download the videos and save them on your computer. Here are some great websites/software that allows you to do this: a) Clip Converter b) Keep Tube c) Keep Vid. I hope you enjoy these tips and find them useful!

Introduction to the English Educational E-quest at Herzog College 5774

Hi, My name is Yadbatz (a transliterated acronym from Hebrew ידב"צ Yehudah DovBer Zirkind (יהודה דוב בער צירקינד. I am embarking on the English digital quest at Herzog College which seeks to empower the next generation of English teachers to make use of existing and emerging digital technologies for studying and teaching. I hope that this adventure will be exciting and exhilaration and I hope there won’t be many obstacles and hitches along the way. Although I am aware that there is a lot of nitty-gritty road work ahead in getting the runway in shape so that it can sustain heavy aircraft maneuvers and there are many grinding screeches during aircraft taxiing before the gliding soaring of takeoff, I hope that the payoff will be that at the end of the course I’ll be able to get rid of my training wheels and spread my wings to soar in the world of digital cyberspace. I am standing on the launching pad and ready for blast off!