Almost a CAT-astrophy

02/08/2013

My third graders were making Cat-in-a-hat-fied bookmarks this week again. See my earlier post about this idea. I say again because last week we had access to 10 iPads in the art room so we grouped and tried, but accomplished very little in one class session. This week I checked out a class set of laptops and changed my strategy. We used Keynote to assemble the bookmark design this time, but turning in artwork on laptops is a different story. The first two classes used my jot form link on my website to upload their images. They went straight to my dropbox (sweet!)
Then a CAT-astrophy almost happened in the next two classes. I directed everyone to turn in their images using jot form and "quota exceeded" came up on everyone's screen! UGH! Jot form had limitations in their free account. I had to think fast. That's when I remembered Airdrop which came as a new feature in my MAC operating system. I put my computer into airdrop mode and asked students to drag and drop their images to me. Eventually it worked! Our wifi struggled, so I would do it differently in the future by only asking one table of students to send at a time. Meanwhile, I got rid of my jot form and changed to dropittome instead. Below are the beautiful bookmarks. (So worth the struggles). View all of these images on our online gallery on Artsonia here.

Comments

tricia fuglestad

02/09/2013 9:06am

I was asked advice for a digital layering art project and thought I'd share my response here Justin case it helps others:

I would take the pictures ahead of time in front of a solid background so the kids could use instant alpha in keynote to erase the background. I have a green screen in my room for this, but, you can use roll paper of any color they are not wearing.
I share pictures with students from my dropbox. I get the link to my dropbox folder and link to it on my website. But, you can run it through a URL shortened and they can type it in to a browser.
Read my post about the troubles I was having with turning the artwork back in above.

I have a tutorial on using instant alpha in keynote if you need it here:
http://drydenart.weebly.com/1/post/2012/10/what-makes-you-scream.html

Tracy

02/10/2013 12:47am

I'm an elementary art teacher and I love your site! I'm still learning Adobe and PSE.My students have access to 4 computers with PSE. I know how to do the clone tool to wipe out an image like Christina, actually I just created it because I was inspired by your Wyeth project.I'm now stuck on the taking their photo and inserting it into the altered artwork.Any help would be great!THANK you!

tricia fuglestad

02/10/2013 9:49am

Hi Tracy,
I have a tutorial for a different project that shows using photoshop elements to add a photo over another layer. https://vimeo.com/13085189
Here is what I would do:
1. Take photos of students in front of a solid background (I use green screen but you can use roll paper too) The idea is to create a field of color different from what they are wearing.
2. After importing into photoshop, use the magic wand to select the background. Click delete.
3. Add a new layer for the image of Christina's World.
4. Resize/ transform the photo as needed.

Hope this helps:)