Digital Images Done Right!

Look up, copy, paste, and re-size are the steps I used to follow to use a digital image in my documents. I looked up the image on Google images and simply re-sized it using the corners to drag and stretch or shrink it to the desired size after I copy and pasted it into the program I was using. Practicing this skill the right way in TPTE 486 has allowed me to understand that there is so much more to digital images than I previously thought.

I had no idea about pixel number and why some images look blurry when you stretched them. Reading about the Raster and Vector really made it clear. Another thing that I hadn't considered when using digital images before was copyright  laws. There are tons of sights where you can get free un-copyrighted digital images instead of Google. Once you got the photos and want to share them, I learned how many tools there are for sharing them! Tools like Flickr, SmugMug, and Photobucket are great tools, along with the main one we have used in class called Picasa.

Teaching students to make their work more exciting by adding images, but not telling them the proper way is like playing a game without the instructions for the first time. You just won't get the most out of it even though you may be able to figure out how to play. Turning the lesson on digital images to a scavenger hunt similar to the one we did in class, by finding the objects in real life and then making an album where we have to re-size and rename was a good exercise that students could have fun doing by being the photographer. You could also have the students make collages of different things you are trying to teach and see what different perspectives you get and it lets students collaborate together as well.