Week 5: App Review: Juxtaposer for iPhone

Cost:  $2.99

Description:  "Juxtaposer lets you combine multiple pictures into creative and fun photomontages quickly and easily thanks to its amazingly intuitive and responsive user interface.  Take any element from one picture and add it to another.  Put your friend's head on a statue's body, remix your pets into a mythical creature, or combine photos into surreal and beautiful works of art, it's simple and the process is fun."

Features: (* denotes features listed by app creator, followed by my agreement or disagreement in red): 

*Share your edited image on Facebook, Flickr and Twitter.  I'm not sure why this was the first "exciting" feature the creator decided to list...but once you finish your picture, you can easily upload it to any of these websites.  


*Save multiple sessions and return to them later.
  I was able to return to my saved sessions without issues arising.

*Save top image cutouts as 'stamps' and use them in future projects.  This is a cool feature of the app, because once you get an image edited to your liking, it can be easily dropped into other pictures so you could make a series using the same 'stamp'.


*Unlimited undo means no mistake or accidental brushstroke is permanent. While using your finger isn't the easiest means of erasing around tiny details, it was helpful to have the option of undoing mistakes over and over.

*Use hard or soft brushes to create sharp or blurred edges.
  I always like the option of have soft edges so that the edited photo doesn't look as harsh, and hopefully ends up looking more like it belongs to the original photo.

*Create smooth blends between images with transparent brushes.  Isn't that what we just discussed above?  ;)


*Keep adding elements from as many pictures to your composite as you like.  I like this feature because it's a great way to make an complex collage with multiple objects of interest.


*Red mask mode (4th screen shot) lets you accurately isolate part of one image without being distracted by the second image in the background.
  This was very helpful because it allows you to see what areas of the top image you were missing while erasing.

*A translucent view mode makes it easy to align your images precisely.  This is nice if you have to relatively large images and you want to be able to drop the first one in a specific spot.


*The stamp tool lets you add multiple copies of your cut-out to your composite.  This would be great for making patterns using the same image over and over.

Classroom Potential: Overall I thought the app was pretty cool.  It is very user friendly (except for the above mentioned issue of fat-finger erasing not being very precise HA!) and it did exactly what I expected it to and more.  I'm already thinking of projects my students could use the app for, such as creating a digital still life by going on a hunt for various images and editing them to work together.  They could even use the app to design their own "tablecloth" for the still life to sit on, or a "wallpaper" backdrop for their still life by finding a graphic image and repeating the image over and over.  I'm so excited to try this with my students!

Visuals: The first three pictures below are the original images I used to create the fourth image with Juxtaposer and the fifth image is a screenshot of the app in action.

Week 3: Blog Bragging

Picture time!!  For the two examples of artwork I've made, I chose two self-portraits I painted in undergraduate.  My BFA emphasis was painting, and though I stick more to drawing now, I would like to get back into oils in the near future...

For my student examples, I have chosen two works by two of my fifth graders last year.  Both of these works also deal with self-reflection, but in different ways...

Week 3: Blog Brainstorming

I started writing this personal blog last spring when I began my first semester at Mizzou while taking VTS I.  I took two classes that first semester, and the other required us to post blog-esque writings on Blackboard.  In hindsight, I wish I had copied all of my Blackboard posts to this blog so that I would have a complete backlog of all my Master's degree progress.  Ah well...

As for using blogs in my classroom, I have not started doing so, but as mentioned in my Read and React for this week, I feel that a blogging-type site, or a similar social media site would be a great venue for me to share projects with parents, and help students interact and critique in a less formal, non-classroom environment.

Read and React Week 3

My students are obsessed with technology.  I mean obsessed.  They talk about their iPods, iPads, cell phones (cell phones???  For kids as young as second grade????  No WAY!).  They love playing online games (Minecraft is huge.  They would talk to me about it for days if they could).  When they can't readily access technology, they're thinking about it, drawing their games, computers, and iPads on scratch paper.  Just today I was talking with one of my colleagues about a new social media-type site for teachers to set up so their students could go online and discuss the day's lessons, and compliment each other (note to self...put a link to this type of site on my website for students to log onto and have mini online critiques or VTS sessions?).  As Prensky states on page 87 of From Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom, "one of the most interesting things I enjoy observing about young people today is the rich online worlds and lives they are in the process of creating for themselves."

The world we are teaching in is so much different than the world we were taught in...and the possibilities that lie ahead seem endless!  "While in the past kids grew up in the dark intellectually and our role (and value) as teachers was to enlighten them, in the 21st century our kids grow up in the light" (p. 113).  They are connected constantly to the world by the forms of technology listed above.  Unfortunately, rather than building on these forms of communication and the knowledge they glean from it, we cut off their external links as they enter school.  The "free time" lives of Digital Natives is changing, so their "school lives" should to.  Some of the changes that are occurring that Prensky specifically mentions are: communication, sharing, buying and selling, exchanging, creating, meeting, collecting, coordinating, evaluating, gaming, learning, searching, analyzing, reporting, programming, socializing, evolving, and frankly GROWING UP differently (Chapter 6).  WHEW!  And because this technology changes so rapidly, we need to keep up with the desires of our students to immediately adopt these new forms of technology and adapt them to work in our classrooms.

In Chapters 7, 8 and 9, Prensky discusses rethinking and restructuring education.  "One of the strangest things in this age of young people's empowerment is how little input our students have into their own education and its future...they are, for the most part, just herded into classrooms and told what to do and when to do it" (p. 102).  As stated on page 112, "the reason we are failing to educate our kids is essentially that we have become afraid to talk to them."  He's so right, but I definitely sense a shift in the opposite direction.  Asking students to share their opinions on how they want to learn, listening to them openly, and honestly taking these opinions into account when planning lessons will benefit our students immensely and help them feel like they are helping form their own destinies.  We need to engage them with play (good old Daniel Pink!) and multiple, personalized options for learning.  "Wherever this has been tried," Prensky writes on page 110, "in scattered public, private, and charter schools, and even MIT--it has been a resounding success.  Kids flock to be part of something that allows them to follow their own interests."

Chapter 10 proposes that we can change our curriculum to focus on current issues surrounding our students, rather than teach one that is based on the past.  Prensky's goal is to entice students to help one another pass the exams of the Legacy curriculum in one semester, by working in groups or individually as they choose, using the help of their teachers and other resources, in order to leave room for a more future oriented second semester.  He feels that giving students a "worthwhile goal and responsibility to meet that goal" (p. 117) is the key to help the education system bring in the future and meet the current challenges facing our students head-on.

Read and React Week 2

I found myself on the fence about my agreement/disagreement with this week's readings.  There's a part of me that wholeheartedly agrees with the idea that traditional (old-fashioned???) methods should be taught so that those types of skills don't disappear.  Am I so traditional that I adhere to Keen's ideology that the Web 2.0 movement is one that worships the creative amateur?  Not necessarily.  My views were ingrained into me by my art professors in college, and my wonderful high school art teacher before that.  I can't help but feel like knowing these types of techniques built a solid foundation on which I can now more successfully add technological skills that are relevant for modern times, not set me apart as an "elite talent."

I did find myself agreeing with the excerpt from Daniel Tapscott's Grown Up Digital.  It gave me hope for newer methods of teaching and learning.  For the most part, I found myself agreeing with Tapscott's musings about the Net Generation.  He told personal stories often based on observing his own children's dealings with technological advances that seemed to somewhat surprise him and mystify him.  For instance, daughter Niki's internet life was considered by her to be a refuge from adults, allowing her to indulge in the Net Generation norms Tapscott describes: 1) freedom; 2) customization; 3) scrutiny; 4) integrity; 5) collaboration; 6) entertainment; 7) speed; and 8) innovation.  Using these norms, Net Geners transition into their twenties and the workforce with a sense that it's a period of "self-discovery and self-realization," as mentioned by Tapscott's son Alex.

But does all this self-involvement taint relationships with others?  Is friendship "slipping from our grasp?" as stated by Deresiewicz?  While Net Geners demand the above norms listed by Tapscott and the choices that come with them, they don't seem to be only looking out for "number 1."  "A record number of Net Geners...are volunteering for civic causes."  And the passage I found most uplifting in favor of this generation in Grown Up Digital was this: "the stereotype that this generation doesn't give a damn is not supported by the facts.  Net Geners care about integrity--being honest, considerate, transparent, and abiding by their commitments.  This is also a generation with profound tolerance."

In Wolf's selection, it was stated that "the immediacy and volume of information should not be confused with true knowledge."  I thought that quote went well with Tapscott's discussion of colleagues his age believing his April Fool's joke about Angelina Jolie joining him at work, without a lick of fact checking.  He then states that these same baby boomers tend to find the variety that comes with technological advances aimed at Net Geners to be burdensome, even when it could help them sift out the truth.

For Net Geners who need this multitude of choices, our current model of democracy wouldn't be sufficient to meet the needs of Net Geners: "four years of listening to politicians endlessly repeating the same speech?"  No thanks.  The products of this generation are also the "new scrutinizers...Given the large number of information sources on the Web, not to mention unreliable information, today's youth have the ability to distinguish between fact and fiction" -or- "trust but verify."  I identify with the last quote because of my gut reaction to always question if photographs have been photoshopped or if information has been embellished.  This discredits Wolf's assumption that technology drives us to believe whatever pops up the fastest.  Maybe it makes me and the Net Geners sound very cynical, but I think it stems from the old adage, "fool me once..."

More cynical even than any Net Gener could dream of being, is Bauerlein's opposite end of the spectrum look at Net Geners, The Dumbest Generation, which pans the generation Tapscott praises.  Just as "the old ones did when Elvis arrived," Bauerlein complains of a youth culture that eschews adult imparted knowledge for peer-to-peer relationships (through "digital tools") that extend "to every minute and every space of the day and night." He claims that the more the Net Geners attend to themselves, "the less they remember the past and envision the future."

Test scores or not, I think this overgeneralization of a an entire generation is false.  To say that everyone before now are so much more knowledgeable of historical or current events gives too much credit where it isn't due.  I personally know a lot of people my mother's age (and even folks as old as my grandparents) who would need a refresher on historical facts and especially on current foreign and domestic affairs to take the tests Bauerlein gathers his statistics from.  The information they could give you would probably be swayed heavily to one side or the other, depending on which political party their friends get their information from.  As Bauerlein later says, "think of how many things you must do in order NOT to know [basic facts]."  I think a lot of people, Net Geners and preceding generations included, go out of their way to bury their heads in the sand.

As mentioned above, this generation is often considered cynical as well as unmotivated but entitled.  As teachers, it's up to us to use technological advances to our advantage in order to find ways to motivate and help students find and create meaning for themselves.  And occasionally "unplug" in order to see beyond that technology (and not take things for granted), like Bartunde Thurston.