Technology Tools: Ideas and Issues
Carefully examine the hardware and software available. You may have everything you need.
- What do you want to do? Will your current hardware and software meet your needs?
- What do you want to do with photos such as adjust brightness and contrast, crop, copy/paste?
A Dozen Ideas
- Digital Camera
Quality of photos, Ease of use, Size of camera, Storage, Data transfer
Does your camera take the quality of photos you need? Is it easy to use? Does it have adequate storage or are additional storage cards needed? Is it easy to transfer photographs to the computer? - Data Storage
CD/DVD, Flash drive, Network
Do you need a way to easily move information from computer to computer? Do your computers all have at least Windows 98 and a USB port that is easily accessible? - Photo Editing Software
Easy to use, Import options
Basic photo editing, Advanced imaging
Do you have easy-to-use photo editing software? Did any software come with your computer, camera, or scanner? Do you already have software on your computer such as Paint for resizing and simple adjustments? Will PhotoShop Elements work for your needs? - Scrapbooking Software
What software is available? Will it work for your needs?- Publish to Screen or Paper - resolution issues
- Specialty Software (scrapbooking or album) - use outside school
- PowerPoint - good for interactivity
- Web pages - good for sharing
- Word Processor - good for printing
- Bubbles
Quotes, Dialog, Debate - Beyond Bullet Points
Speaker notes, Audio button - Thumbnails
Timelines, Menus, Body Parts, Debate
Click Photo to Enlarge - Photo Hooks
Use photos to motivate and bring meaning - Combine with Web-based Photos
Advertisements, Book covers, Famous people, CD covers - Pictures with Words and Symbols
Haiku and other poetry
Math formulas - Photography Ideas
Action Shots, Distance, Perspective, Point of View - Web-based Tools
Myfamily.com, Blogger.com
File Management
Organizing text, artwork, and original documents is an important part of e-scrapbooking. It's a good idea to create an electronic folder for each project and keep all original files in addition to the file e-scrapbook page.
Issues
When designing e-scrapbook projects, it's essential to consider copyright issues. Although you may intend to share your project within a classroom or family, you should still think about a few key ideas.
- Citations. Regardless of whether or not a project will be shared, it's important to cite the sources you use. It's common sense, modeling ethical conduct, as well as useful in tracking the ideas later.
- Copyright Concerns. If you plan to share your project on the Web, be sure to check copyright issues. For example, if you've incorporated a poem, photograph, or music you may need to get permission to share these things. If it's simply a quote from a website or a couple lines from a longer poem, you can cite your source. However if you're using photos from a collection or a piece of artwork, be sure to check the legal issues. For example, in some cases you can use photos from the Library of Congress. However this is not true in all case. If you don't want to deal with these potential issue, take your own photographs, write our own poems, and purchase clipart for use in your projects.