Camp Plug and Play 5.0: Visuals, Photography & Design

Notes:

Camp Plug & Play 5.0 offers a world-class professional development experience where participants dive into one of five topics for the week. Strands offered in June are: Get Smart with Your Whiteboard, Screencasting: Tutorials 2.0, Fantastic Films with iMovie ’09, Get Going with Google, and Visuals, Photography & Design. Each strand is taught by knowledgeable and patient trainers who have a strong passion for empowering teachers and students with technology.

Registration includes your own room Monday until Friday and delicious breakfasts, lunches and breaks at the Westward Look Resort. Most importantly, you receive practical instruction and lots of hands-on time so that you leave with new knowledge, skills, and confidence to use what you’ve learned in your classroom.

The week kicks off Monday afternoon with an opening presentation from Hall Davidson, former teacher and PBS producer who is currently the director of the Discovery Education Network. After the keynote, participants meet in their learning strands where they will spend the rest of the week learning, playing, and creating. In addition to direct instruction and work time, Camp Plug & Play offers evening breakout sessions about popular topics like productivity and iPods. Another evening session is Pecha Kucha. Campers are invited to make presentations consisting of exactly 20 slides which are shown on the screen for exactly 20 seconds each. Those that present these fast-paced speeches are entered to win terrific prizes.

To make sure the technology works smoothly, the Arizona K12 Center provides a MacBook for each participant to use during the day. Although you might not be a Macintosh user, what you learn at camp will certainly be applicable to computers running Windows. Watch for email from the Arizona K12 Center in the weeks leading up to Camp Plug & Play for information about the camp's online social network, your learning strand, Pecha Kucha, and breakout sessions.

Camp Plug & Play is a great way to spend some of your summer! This is your opportunity to join a group of Arizona educators who, like you, are passionate about engaging today's students in their learning.

Visuals, Photography & Design

Today's teachers are creating more and more of their own learning materials. Visuals are important and design is often taken for granted. Whether it's your classroom website, newsletter, worksheet, video, poster, or slide show, details and design do matter. Visuals, Photography & Design is for teachers who already have a website and are familiar with publishing software like Microsoft Word.

This strand first explores photography and participants will learn to take better photos with point-and-shoot cameras. Besides using free web-based tools for photo enhancement, participants in Visuals, Photography & Design will learn all about GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program. GIMP is software for Mac, Windows, and Linux that is a free alternative to Photoshop. GIMP is made for tasks like photo retouching, image composition, and image authoring.

Design topics include tools for choosing the perfect color combination, ways to improve PowerPoint slide shows, and creation of posters for the classroom. With the tips and tools shared, teachers will impress their students, parents, and fellow teac hers. Digital and paper creations can appear more professional by improving aesthetics to create things that are both meaningful and beautiful.

Participants will put what they learn about visuals, photography, and design to use in a variety of practical projects, including the development of a classroom logo. While some of what teachers learn about design is specifically for them, most of what participants learn is very applicable to what 21st Century students should learn, particularly when it comes to improving the design of student-made projects.

In Visuals, Photography & Design you will:

•    Take remarkable photographs.
•    Discover the elements of good design.
•    Learn the basics and advanced features of the free GIMP software.
•    Remove the background from photos.
•    Make attractive handouts, worksheets, and website graphics.
•    Explore sources for copyright-friendly images.
•    Improve PowerPoint slide shows.
•    Use a variety of free web-based tools for image manipulation.
•    Discuss the importance of teaching design principles to students.

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