Photo+Editing

= Photo Editing Software =

Andy Clark

=Description and Uses of Technology= These various software options allow users to take their photos and sharpen them, or add various visual effects to make the photographs as natural or unnatural as they desire. This can be used in art classrooms as a tool to make student artwork even more realistic or unrealistic. Often, people use online software such as Picnik (http://www.picnik.com/) to edit their photos on the web, often times making the photos more comical for a scrap book or collage. For a more powerful software with more abilities and effects, Adobe Photoshop has a multitude of color filters and effects to make images pop out. "Photoshop is still the industry standard" (Doyle 2003). Students can "use Photoshop layers to separate components of an image for processing" (Doyle 2003) to digitally remaster their photos. In an effort to see how an active art teacher would use photo editing software in her classroom, I interviewed a long-time friend of mine. The following is an excerpt of a conversation between myself Vanessa Zoellner, an art teacher in Cleveland, Ohio: AC: Would you use photo editing software in your classroom? Why or why not? VZ: Basically integrating any kind of technology would be great in the classroom, so thats one reason. AC: Yeah, the big push for integrating more technology in the classroom is everywhere. I wouldn't think that to be the case with art, though. VZ: It's basically just another outlet for students to become interested and motivated. AC: What could you see yourself doing with the students and photo editing? VZ: Specifically? Projects on things like surrealism, where they could use imagination to create art...perhaps simple things like incorporating photography and capturing the spirit of an object and messing around with color/quality and photo adjustments... VZ: I mean editing photos...learning about pop art...making digital collages...

Former educator Paula Guhin outlines 10 excellent lessons for digital image editing. A few examples include making "composite creatures" that involve multiple parts of different animals, "it's surreal" where students fill up a landscape with as many crazy items as they can, and "fun with filters" that involves taking a nice landscape picture and applying different filters to it in different areas. It was shown that the students had high levels of engagement due to their creativity and curiosity being piqued.

Photo editing lends itself to Constructivist theory nicely. In a course/study conducted by M. Neo, "The recreation of the images involved more advanced Photoshop techniques, many of which were not taught in the labs, and therefore the students had to find their own ways to re-create the special effects in their final work" (Neo 2003). By teaching them enough to get started with the software and giving them a goal, he allowed students to reach the goals in whatever way made sense to them.

Important Findings on Student Outcomes
"Asking students to manipulate digital photos on the computer is one of the easiest ways I know to engage their attention. It's fabulous fun for them and a great teaching tool," (Guhin 2009). "Asking your students to manipulate electronic photos is not only an excellent method of teaching proficiency with image-editing software, but it's also an occasion that can be moving and significant to them," (Guhin 2009).

A teacher using an interactive mapping and editing software stated: "Teaching this way involves extra time on my part, but it's worth it. They are glued to my every word in class." (A/V Club Next Generation 2009).

"The technology used in the classroom acts as a support tool for the teacher to enhance students' learning processes" (Neo 2003). 91% of the 310 students that completed Neo's project said the digital image editing assignment "enhance[d] learning of the subject", and 84.8% of the students said it allowed them to think creatively. Allowing students autonomy and the ability to come up with their own solutions appears to be an added bonus for these types of assignments. Most of the dissenting votes cited that they would prefer a more traditional mode of education, showing that there are still students that prefer to be told what to know and how to learn it. Some of the negative feelings toward this assignment could also be attributed to being overwhelmed with freedom.

In looking at the learning outcomes of students that are asked to create their own graphic organizers, Mayer and Stull found that "increased physical activity on the part of the learner should not be interpreted to indicate deeper learning" (Mayer 2007). While creating graphic organizers are a far cry from editing images, the creation aspect of both projects is the same, and this study warns that students may not be learning the material by just doing these projects. They should also have some sort of supplement to the lesson so they are able to learn the content as well as "do" the projects. This means that merely creating a digital journal full of images from World War II does not mean the students have learned about World War II. Teachers must make sure to give supplemental instruction to ensure that students "get" the content.

Sadik had students create a photo story and found that "digital storytelling enriched the classroom learning environment, the curriculum, and student learning experiences by providing an open-ended, creative and motivating productive tool in the classroom" (Sadik 2008). The researchers went on to say "that students were encouraged to think more deeply about the meaning of the topic or story and personalize their experience and also clarify what they knew about the topic before and during the process of developing and communicating their stories" (Sadik 2008). This study meshes nicely with the Mayer study, both showing that photo or visual projects serve to enrich the classroom learning environment, but do not substitute for the entire teaching process.

Emerging Trends and Open Issues
The issue impacting this software in art classrooms the most would be a lack of access to a 1:1 setting for students to utilize this software. Also, budget crunches may make acquiring the licenses to photo editing software prohibitive. However, there are "Open-Source" editing software options available. These free software options would allow schools to save money while still offering close to the same experience they would get with Photoshop.

"Traditionally, photography courses have been a luxury reserved only for schools that can afford the high price. Photo labs and darkrooms, chemicals, paper, cameras, and other equipment all add up to a cost far beyond the means of many schools. But modern technology has leveled the playing field. Many of today's digital cameras are inexpensive and easy to operate, and their use can be tailored to a variety of age groups and curriculum areas. True, there is no darkroom experience with digital photography, but technology makes a photography course a viable option for any school with a computer lab and editing software" (Doyle 2003). This truly does allow cash strapped schools to skip out on the expensive part of a photography course (the dark room, film) and really allow students to still tackle the subject.

Often times, devising these digital lessons is time consuming. One teacher interviewed in the A/V Club Next Generation article stated: "Developing these activities and allowing kids the amount of time to really work on them is my biggest challenge. It would be much easier to give my 45-minute PowerPoint historical presentation and tell the same jokes every year" (A/V Club Next Generation 2009). However, as a previous A/V teacher's quote appearing earlier on this page has said, the students are no doubt engaged by the digital lessons. So, teachers must decide if the front-end time is worth it to make the class more engaged, or if their "old" methods will suffice.

As evidenced by the 29% of Neo's college students that preferred a lecture rather than a hands-on group image editing project, some students may prefer to either work alone or not work on photo editing at all. This suggests that maybe it should be an elective type of assignment or class to allow the students that really want to work on it to do so while allowing the students that do not wish to do so to do another type of project or class.

We must be careful with this push toward heavy multimedia learning, however. Adding bells and whistles for the sake of bells and whistles, or adding irrelevant multimedia material to lessons can cause students to "integrate the presented material with inappropriate prior knowledge" (Mayer 2001). An example of this idea would be students remembering an interactive video because it was interactive, but do not make any connection to the content or build incorrect assumptions based on the video. Heavy focus on multimedia presentation methods overload their senses if we give them too many things to pay attention to at once. If their senses are overwhelmed, it could lead to a cognitive overload situation where none of the content reaches their memory.

In a later study in 2007, Mayer found that increasing the student activity in creating their own graphic organizer did not necessarily mean they were learning the content. So, while allowing students to create something is great, we need to make sure they have some type of learning opportunity as well. Furthermore, "fewer number of groups provided clear evidence of connection between the objectives of their stories and the objectives of the subject matter, suggesting that not all the other students may learn from these stories" (Sadik 2008). This shows that there must be some other educational learning opportunity to make sure students learn content and the photo projects should be used as a supplement.