Tag Archives: laptop

Lessons & Units, My Resources

Half Old Portrait

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HalfOldThis morning I was approached by a teacher (Megan from HLY) whose students have been asked to draw split portraits of themselves, half their current age, and half when they are older. Megan asked if we could use some software to age the students, and I showed her AgingBooth (available for Android and iOS). I’ve used this app, and its cousin FatBooth, in the past with students, and they absolutely love the experience. From a personal development point of view, it also faces them to think about the future and what it might be like.

After a little playing around, we came up with the image below, which uses half of a regular image (thanks Jayne) and half of the same image run through AgingBooth:

HalfOld

The aim would be to have students produce such an image of themselves, print it, and then use it as the basis of their self portrait. This could be achieved as follows:

Required Technology

  • Mobile device (phone/tablet) running iOS or Android.
  • AgingBooth (free on Android, USD $0.99 on iOS)
  • Desktop device (Mac/Windows laptop)
  • Desktop image editing software (Acorn for a Mac, GIMP for Windows)
  • Ability to transfer images from mobile to desktop device (email, USB)

Learning Outcomes

  • Students produce a computer generated split portrait of themselves, half current and half old.
  • Students use a combination of different devices and software to produce a particular result.
  • Students understand the need to log out of or remove and account from a shared device.

Lesson Outline

  • Introduce students to the idea that we can capture an image, and then use a computer to manipulate the image. This might take the form of subtle changes (cropping, colour enhancement), or wholesale “photoshopping”.
  • Show students the example work and ask them if they can guess how it was done.
  • Reveal that the image was capture on an iPad, and then transferred to a MacBook for editing.
  • Pair students up with one iPad per pair, and ask them to:
    • Access AgingBooth on their iPad
    • Take photos of each other in AgingBooth, and follow the instructions for placing markers:

AgingBoothMarkers

    • Once the old image has been produced, students can shake the phone to switch between their real and old selves.
    • Students should email both their old and real images to themselves, using the Share button (shown below). If the device is shared, students need to log out of or remove their email accounts after they are finished: this can be explained as a security precaution to prevent others using their account.

AgingBoothShare

    • Students can now use their desktop devices to download the email attachments, and save them to their desktops.
    • The attachments can be opened with the image editor. The old image should be cropped to half its size, then copied into the real image and aligned into position.
    • Finally, students can save and print their images.
Lessons & Units, My Resources

Gadget Shop

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Fed up of students wanting only the latest, trendiest gadget (usually from Apple at our school), I created this lesson to get students to more rationally and thoroughly assess a range of gadgets. One of the intended outcomes is to encourage students to consider devices at different price points, with the aim of seeing what represents good value, where cut corners effect the whole experience, and what features are just marketing fluff.

Gadget Shop SpreadsheetGadget Shop Spreadsheet (XLSX)

Students could undertake this task individually, or in small groups, but my preference is to have them do it as a whole class, with the hope of promoting more discussion and passion about what is valuable, and what is not. The following instructions, included in the spreadsheet, should guide students in completing the spreadsheet:

  1. Decide on the 10 criteria you wish to judge each device on, or use the ones included. The criteria must be the same for all devices. An example would be “Screen Size”.
  2. Assign each criteria a weight according to it’s importance. Total weight must be equal to 100.
  3. Choose 9 devices (3 laptops, 3 tablets, 3 phones) and enter their names into the column headers (e.g. Laptop 1 name goes into “L1 Name”)
  4. Research the nine devices online, and enter details of the specs for each criteria under the “Detail” column for that device.
  5. Assign a “Score” for each criteria (from 0 up to 10), based on the information entered into the “Detail” column.
  6. Once the table is complete, the highest score total for each product type should be the best product.