Bling your Google site - adding buttons and background images

Thank you to all the attendees at todays Manaiakalani Toolkit on Blinging your site. 

We went through a step by step guide of how to update your site background/wrapper image and how to create functional buttons. 

If you missed it or need a recap, please enjoy my powerpoint presentation with step by step instructions. 

I recommend naming your Google Draws as the size and button template eg. 4cm x 4cm button template. After you download each button/image as PNG, you can adapt and edit it suit your next button. This way they end up the same size and looking swish. 

It was a pleasure to share some of my learning with others today, I look forward to learning from others in the Manaiakalani community at the next toolkit. 

Hei konā mai, ngā mihi. 

Stef

This blogpost relates to me meeting the registered teaching criterion 4 & 5. 

4. demonstrate commitment to ongoing professional learning and development of personal professional practice

ii. participate responsively in professional learning opportunities within the learning community

iii. initiate learning opportunities to advance personal professional knowledge and skills

5. show leadership that contributes to effective teaching and learning

i. actively contribute to the professional learning community

ii. undertake areas of responsibility effectively 

Learning to Animate

This is an animation that I made in Google Presentation. As the students in my class know I am mildly obsessed with Pukeko's - hence choosing them for my character in this animation is not surprising. 

All up it is made of 79 slides. 
I used Keynote's 'instant alpha' to remove the white background from the pukeko image, then copy it into the slide show. 
I copied and shrunk/enlarged/cropped the pukeko to make the different characters, and each slide was made by copying the last, then adjusting the movements of each character, before copying it again for the next slide. 
Finally I published the presentation to web, then changed the html to adjust the time between slides to 200 down from 1000 or 3000. 
I must admit, I enjoyed making this a lot more than I expected. 

The power of photoshop

We've all seen photoshop images and movies showing the drastic 'improvements' that media can make to photo's to make people fit the proposed beauty ideals to sell products or persuade.

However as digital immigrants we better (hopefully) at seeing through media images and not taking things at face value - no pun intended. 

Students on the other hand, are so accustomed to seeing made-up media that it's easy for them to take it for truth, showing examples such as the above are one thing, but the best way to really teach media awareness is to have students do this to themselves. 

Today I practiced using the multitude of free tools available to do this, should you not want to pay for the full photoshop version. Pixlr and PicMonkey are just some of the options available. As well as iphoto editing tools. I look forward to practicing these skills with my students and helping them to see media images as what they really are, glossed up sugar coated images. 



Moreover, the careers that are possible with skills and knowledge of photoshop, are increasing. This movie editing picture shared by Karen Ferguson is a prime example.