"Academic Scrapbooking"
Is it an option for YOUR classroom? Are you in need of a fresh perspective with transitioning tools towardsliterature, science, art or history projects?
How about a newPresentation idea to keep your
students' interest? Consider Digital Scrapbooking!
Being an avid scrapbooker, I appreciated the article stumbled upon while creating this post, encouraging scrapbooking in the classroom! Social Studies teacher Heidi Willard and English teacher Lori Solomon share about students' scrapbooking experiences.
The article suggests through scrapbooking, Students:
- connect to what they’re learning
- create something that’s their own (which illustates the way they understand the underlying lesson), and retain the lessons better through creating
- use reading, writing, research and critical-thinking skills
- visual literacy is integrated by requiring students to combine words and images
- experiment with various writing styles, including narrative, descriptive, expository, and persuasive
"As an English teacher, Solomon says her aim with scrapbooks was to get her students writing. For one literary-research project, students chose a theme and created a book, following certain prompts for individual pages, such as finding a poem, a work of art, and a great thinker that expressed the chosen theme. Students also wrote an introduction and designed a cover. To help them understand personal identity and character development, another assignment required students to explore their own identity through a personal photo journal that combined student-created artwork and photos with the writing."
“Literature becomes personal when they realize there are themes that can relate to their own life,” says Solomon. By making her assignments more than just essays or research papers, it helped draw out her more reluctant writers and created better writers in general, she adds."
Sound convincing for your Digital Students?
CM's digital software and Adobe's Photoshop Elements.
Through this class I've decided now is the time to compare the two.
~ My sister is using Digital Scrapping in her Kindergarten classroom this year!
Using my experience with CM's Digital Software and the information gleaned
from Photoshop Element's Tech Support, I came up with the following:
Photoshop Elements (PSE)
- $100
- Photo Editing, and Organizing with Face Tagging (cool!)
- Free Tech Support for installation only, and for certain issues if you have your serial number
- MAC compatible
- Free Digi Artwork on site, unavailable
- Work offline? yes
- On the Photoshop Elements 9 website, customers will find videos showing how to take advantage of all of its features.
- How often come out with new digital paper, embellishments, etc,- they don't
- There is a 30 day trial version of PSE available here (under “Digital Imaging”)
- (In order to answer more questions, Tech Support needed my email address and telephone number so I opted out, and it was difficult to understand each other's foreign accents)
StoryBook Creator Plus (SBC+), sbcStudio (for MAC) and Memory Manager (MM)
- SBC+ $64.95 (50% off download through August 31st! Check with me)
- MM-$39.95 =photo editing, organize photos by date, folder and albums
- Free Tech Support
- MAC compatible (free 30-Day download trial) (also 50% off download through August)
- Free Digital Artwork
- Academic, Yearbook, Sports, Band trip pages available under "Digital Predesigned Pages", "Click and Fill"
- Free Webinars
- Stitch-bound StoryBooks as opposed to glued
- Acid-free, buffered, lignin-free pages
- Can work offline
- (based out of MN, so when calling Tech Support can understand each other)
Following are Testimonials on each Software:
CM's StoryBook Plus :
- I am a graphic artist with 10 years experience with Adobe Creative Suite and other Adobe products. I also have used Storybook Creator Plus with CM. There are so many things that Photoshop (which is the professional version of Elements) does that Storybook Creator Plus will do. StoryBook Plus makes it easier to manipulate placement of elements and order of pages. Possibilities are endless. I can do a page in 10 minutes.
- I'm a professional photographer who loves to scrapbook digitally. I don't know how I could live without BOTH of these software in my collection.
- I have both Photoshop Elements and CM's Storybook Plus and by far I love the CM product. To me, PSE was too complicated and you needed the manual, CM's product was so easy and they even offer free web training. You can incorporate your own digital files and even make your own .png files (they show you how). I was really impressed with the quality of the storybook.
- Creative Memories Storybook PLUS-I love it and can roughly finish 18-24 layouts per day! It is easy and fast.
- I use Creative Memories and love it. I have made many different projects with it besides storybooks and scrapbook pages. I have designed my own pdf files for coffee mugs, tshirts, calendars, etc and posters and even turned some small posters into placemats for my kids because my husband is deployed and now they have fancy placemats of them with their daddy to eat on every night.
- I have tried at least 4 different digital scrapbooking companies and by far Creative Memories Storybook Creator PLUS is the best. They have great tutorials and a digital hotline. I am addicted to it. Over time, you simply perfect your technique and become more and more comfortable with the program. It is so awesome!
Photoshop Elements:
- While many newcomers to digital scrapbooking have pulled out more than a few handfuls of hair as they've tried to figure PSE out, when compared to many other software programs, PSE is fairly simple and straightforward. It provides a nice balance of functionality and ease-of-use that will allow you to do many things, without requiring that you get a degree in computer programming to do so!
- Not only can you use premade digital scrapbooking elements on your page, when using PSE you can also design your own digital pages and embellishments from scratch, and you can edit your photos as well. No need to purchase several different software programs; PSE can do it all, or at least a lot of it!
- Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 is loaded with extras that will make any picture a masterpiece. A lack of email support was the only con we could identify
She's having each student bring a 3-ring binder and 8.5x11" page protectors.
Using CM digi-downloads, she'll have them create 8.5x11" page prints to add to their binders
(won't be acid/lignin-free, but less expense this way). Students will also create Traditional scrapping pages throughout the year, personalizing and recording their special moments.
As a parent I would LOVE my student coming home with this all put together
and their school year documented.
Digital, Academic Scrapbooking ~ a unique type of media for your students.
Would it impact their audience?
Would they be more likely to retain information through its use?
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Sources:
http://photo-editing-software-
http://ezinearticles.com/?
http://www.twopeasinabucket.
http://www.twopeasinabucket.
Love it! I would for sure use this in my English class to have my students create character colleges, theme posters for novels, etc. What a great way for the students to connect with what they're reading!
ReplyDeletewhen it comes to such classes as history and English I think something like this would be very successful. It would give kids an opportunity to express themselves and possibly learn something while having fun in school.
ReplyDelete