"Powering Up"

In class we have now learnt about editing photos. Photos are so easy to take now. Before we had to go to the store and buy film. Once the film was full we had to go back to the store to get it developed... which took who know how long to finally get it back. (I don't really remember this actually, but I remember my mom doing it!!) Now it seems everyone has a smart phone. Cameras are so good on smart phones that many people no longer even have a digital camera. (I have both!) Once you take a picture on your smart phone it is very easy to edit the picture right there in seconds. There is also some cool websites that edit photots as well. I have tried to: pixlr and ribbit. I personally liked using ribbit. It was super easy to use and had many features that you could do to your photos. Here are two examples of photos I have edited.

Using Pixlr

Using Ribbit 

I find editing photos something fun to do. I would definitely use programs to edit photos in my class. I think it is a fun, creative way to express yourself. I think students would have fun playing with their own photos.

I have also started to read "Powering Up" for my ICT class. The section I have read is called "Turning up the Juice" which I have read the sub-section "Inquiry Learning: This Isn't Scary at All" by Shelly Wright. I really enjoyed this article because it made me think about how I would structure my class. Shelly believed in allowing her students compose their own experiments in her chemistry class. She believed that allowing students to compose their own experiments they would learn a lot more. This is a student centered approach to learning. She explained to her class that there was no failure in any experiment because you are still learning and when scientists do experiments they don't always get the results they wanted either. Students really enjoyed this way of learning because it was engaging. It was better than just getting lectured every class and taking notes. It was hands on and they got to learn things for themselves. I absolutely loved this idea and would love to do this with my future students. I think when students are engaged and really enjoying what they are doing they will be able to learn much more because they actually care about that class.