The Teaching Palette

Review: IKEA Dignitet Curtain Wire and Clips

Posted on 30. Jul, 2009 by Hillary Andrlik + Theresa McGee in All Posts, Clssrm Mgmt, Organization and Preparation, Reviews, Tools and Miscellaneous

Submitted by: Anni Lyzenga, middle and high school art teacher from Lakeland, Florida

Product Title: IKEA Dignit Curtain Wire and Clips

Grade Levels: 3rd grade and up

Categories: Teaching Resource, Art History/Aesthetics/Criticism

Product Review: The Ikea Dignitet curtain wire and clips are a great addition to the art room.  Used together, these can be used to quickly clip up artwork for student critiques, or as a more permanent exhibit of student work.  Be sure to have a wire cutter handy as well to cut off extra length of wire to fit your room.  Currently, I have three of these installed in my art room.  Be sure to chose a spot that is easy for all students to view and if stacking them, leave enough space to display large artwork or posters.

Bucket Rating (out of 5):

(5) Love it! Need it! Gotta have it now!

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Delicious Denial

Posted on 22. Jul, 2009 by Theresa McGee in All Posts, Clssrm Mgmt, Organization and Preparation

I was once in Delicious denial; I had heard of Delicious as a social bookmarking site but really didn’t see the need to use it.  Sure, sharing bookmarks with everyone else is a nice concept, but I already had spent hours organizing my own bookmarks in Safari and was just fine with my own little system. What I wasn’t willing to admit at the time was that my little system of organized bookmark folders was not very effective.

The chart below describes my reasons for finally making the switch to Delicious:

So what about your organized websites neatly tucked into a bookmark folder? When uploading to Delicious, the folders and sub-folders that you created on your computer will turn into tags – no need to redo anything! See how easy it is to use Delicious in the Tutorial below:

Can’t view video above? Click here.

So here’s where the “social” part of Delicious comes in:  If you think a website is useful to others who also read The Teaching Palette, add the tag “teachingpalette” (one word).  See the hundreds of art education resources we’ve already tagged here.

Useful Tips:

• When using compound words such as “art history” do not leave spaces in between each word as they will separate into two different tags. Instead write “arthistory” or “art_history”. (I learned this one the hard way)
• Use “tag options” to change or rename a tag.
• Bulk edit is useful for adding additional tags to large groups of bookmarks or making selected tags on bookmarks private.
• Keep in mind that although your bookmarked website will show up instantly in your Delicious account, sometimes it takes longer for the tags to register.
• Use Delicious as your search engine – type in a tag on the Delicious homepage to see what websites others have bookmarked.
• It never hurts to create a backup of your Delicious bookmarks from time to time. (Backup directions can be accessed when logged in)

An Alternative to Adobe: Aviary’s Free Design Tools

Posted on 18. Jul, 2009 by Hillary Andrlik in All Posts, Cool+Creative, In The News, Multimedia, Neat Video, Organization and Preparation, Positive Reinforcement, Reviews, Tech Stuff, Techniques, Technology and Gadgets, Tools and Miscellaneous

If you’re looking for the image editing power of Photoshop or Illustrator without the hefty price tag you may want to consider trying the Aviary Suite.  It’s a free web 2.0 technology with a pro version available for $24.99 a year. Aviary is not only an image editing tool but it’s also a visual social network.

Users maintain a profile, contacts, favorites, access to chat boards, tutorials and more. Images created in the Aviary Suite can be shared with the community or kept private in a user account, and then saved in a variety of formats or downloaded to your computer.

Plus, users can import images from a URL, Aviary Library, Flickr, Picasa or Facebook directly into any of Aviary’s five programs – Phoenix, Falcon, Peacock, Toucan and Raven.

Phoenix does image editing and has tools like layers, masks, effects, undo history, and more. Peacock is what Aviary calls their “visual laboratory”. It features tools like generators, effects and controllers. Toucan is their color swatches and palettes. It features many of the usual color palette tools but what really was interesting to me was their color deficiency preview tool. It allows you to choose from a list of color vision deficiencies and see how someone who is color blind would distinguish your color palette. It would be a great way to teach students how other people see the world. Toucan is a simple tool, but in conjunction with the other programs in the Aviary Suite you can create some amazing images. Raven is their vector editor program and the first of its kind on the web.  It allows you not only to create complex vector art but to carefully scale and create logos, clip-art, large print ready graphics, and t-shirt and clothing designs.

The newest program is an image markup tool called Falcon. It allows you to capture images from your desktop or a web page and edit them in your browser. It is similar to Skitch or Jing but with additional capabilities since it can be used in conjunction with Aviary’s other programs. Just install Talon, a Firefox extension for Aviary, and you can quickly annotate, mark, crop and resize your captured images. Or you can transfer the images to any of the other Aviary programs for more in-depth editing. Falcon would be a great tool to have students critique an image of their own, a classmates or from a pool of stock photos.

If you teach a computer graphics program at a middle or high school and are looking for an exceptional resource or additional tools to extend beyond the classroom lab, Aviary might be a solution for your program.  Students don’t have to stop creating once they leave the lab since they can log on and design anywhere there is an Internet connection.

Below are two videos featuring Aviary’s Raven and Falcon programs.

(Trouble viewing this video? Try this link.)

(Trouble viewing this video? Try this link.)