EDUC-6305: Image Capture

Today’s assignment was somewhat related to yesterday’s, but whereas the previous assignment was to be made from scratch, this one required the use of the screen capture utility and editing via Paint. I’ve recently become aware of the use and creation of ‘illuminated texts’ within the classroom and thought I might create a product which could be used to introduce one.

These highly creative representations are typically crafted by teachers and students to ‘illustrate’ various aspects of literary works, using programs such as MS PowerPoint, Flash, and Windows Movie Maker. If anyone is interested in a closer look, I highly recommend visiting a AWaytoTeach.net (a link to which can be found on the left-hand panel under ‘Links to Greatness…). This is a fantastic free site and a great resource for English Teachers, or anyone else with interest in literature. The only rub is that visitors must demonstrate willingness to be part of the site’s community (via two or three discussion response posts) before gaining access to materials such as lesson plans and illuminated texts. There is much to be gained from the process.

–One of my goals during the course of this class is to become better acquainted with these programs and the use of specific functions within them, so that I might more readily facilitate lessons using illuminated texts. I chose to create an introductory page for John Gardner’s Grendel, which is commonly used in High School English classes. In this process, I found a graphic representation of Grendel by searching the images domain at Google.com. I captured the image with the Print Screen function and opened it in Paint; then the editing began. After cropping the graphic, I decided to give it some color using the paintbrush, pencil, color fill, airbrush, and eyedropper tools. Since this is meant to represent an introductory graphic to a presentation, I decided to make the image proportions reflective of a book and found a suitable background with another Google Image search. Then I superimposed the first graphic on the second and looked for appropriate fonts, given the story’s context. I used two different strategies for this process:

1) I found alphabet clip art on-line with a ‘bloody’ theme, and then cut, pasted, and manipulated the graphics in MS Publisher until I re-created a visual of the book’s title. At this point, I merged the individual graphics; saved the result as a PNG file, opened that file in Paint, and superimposed the 'title' image on my work-in-progress.

2) After that, I used the text box function in Paint to write the author’s name below the title.

Ultimately, I saved my graphic as a JPEG, so that it can be easily opened and reproduced. The image specifications are as follows:

Size: 54693 bytes
Dimensions: 385 x 569 pixels

In addition to incorporating these types of images as previously described, in the conduct of classroom activities to improve student learning, similar processes might also be used to create posters reflective of reading assignments, serve as cover pages for or illustrations within reports and papers, or simply be used as fun, creative avenues for activities involving creative student reflection. The application of this method easily lends itself to manipulation toward meeting specific content areas and the technological aspect enable teachers to meet Grossman's four TPCK standards.

To see my finished product, click here.