First Webinar Experience

So I finally was able to watch a webinar.  I didn't do the one on Discovery Streaming because I got called to sub (I wanted the money....), so I found one on Google's Picasa program.  I was really interested to learn something about this because I have used PhotoShop before and I've wondered how similar these programs are.  The webinar I watched was taped from March 19th. It went through a lot of different features that you can use, like editing photos, making collages, and creating movies.  It all seemed relatively easy (I can't wait to try it) and the best part is that it is free!  All you have to do is download the program and you're set.  You don't even need the internet to edit and make collages with your photos.  Some of the features are actually very similar to PhotoShop, which is nice because PhotoShop and Adobe Creative Suite are extremely expensive and this would be a nice option for a digital photography class.  It would have been nice to see this live, so I could have asked questions, but a lot of things that I wanted to ask were asked in the chat box.  

P.S. - This blog that I found the webinar on has a lot of other webinars and technology tools for educators.  There's a lot of helpful and interesting information on it.

NETS-T4

This weeks topic is the NETS-T4 standard. It states that teachers understand local and global societal issues and responsibilities in an evolving digital culture and exhibit legal and ethical behavior in their professional practices. The indicator I am going to look at is a: advocate, model, and teach safe, legal, and ethical use of digital information and technology, including respect for copyright, intellectual property, and the appropriate documentation of sources.

This is something, that I feel is sometimes looked over in the art world because there are so many art images online free for the taking. This is a great thing and it can be a bit of an issue. If you wanted to find a picture of The Mona Lisa on Google, you would probably come up with hundreds of images. Yet Da Vinci isn't around to say "hey, you can't take my image without my permission!" It's great that these images are out there for students to use and see artwork that they never would otherwise be able to see, but there should be one reputable site that has a majority of these images and that would be a good resource for students.

There are also some websites that artists can go to to post their own artwork for the world to see and if they don't copyright it and have that watermark on the image, anyone can take it without that artist making a dime. So there are some ethical issues when it comes to art and the internet, teachers need to stress that images are also resources and that they need to be documented just like any other source.