Monday, September 10, 2012
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Digital Art
Creating art via computer technology isn't new. The
Microsoft Windows program, Paint, has been explored by children from donkeys
years all around the world but recent years have given computer art an artistic eye and has simulated it
more close to the real world. In many parts of the world, digital art is
gaining popularity at a very fast pace. Soft wares like Corel, Autodesk,
SketchBook Pro, Art Studio and Sculpmaster, as well as ArtRage, have been added
in the curriculum of many digital art classes.
Being a teacher and going with the flow, even I added
ArtRage as the part of the curriculum for the lower classes. My first few
sentences in the class introduced ArtRage theoretically, but just after few
sentences children use to take over my speech with their act and leave me with
my mouth wide open. The students of Class VI, VII use to create picture
perfect portraits of Dawn, natural sceneries with typical forests at both sides
of the flowing river, the setting of the sun and what not. I believe what
children loved was that they could squeeze paint onto their screen and
manipulate it with their palette knife. Another thing that attracted them was
that they could adjust the wetness of the brush and paper to create watercolor
paintings to their specification. They could import their own photos and
convert them to oil for smearing, or use them as a reference image to create
something new.
Digital artwork has
actually exploded over the past 10 years with graphic tablets and painting packages
becoming more affordable and available to everyone. More recently, devices such
as the iPad have taken digital art production, with apps for sketching and
painting on the go.
Software’s like ArtRage on a TabletPC take advantage of the
unique interaction of pen and screen to produce a realistic painting feel. The
more convincing part is that, it allows artists to quickly try out its various
features before committing time and money to expensive materials. The
advantages over traditional painting are obvious: colors are quick to access
and any mistakes are easily erased with a ‘back’ button - a good job, as there
are so many times, impatient people like me, accidentally smudge things up the
wrong way and leave it in between thinking it as- not my cup of tea. Some apps
let us even start with Backgrounds as realistic as canvas, blackboards or even
concrete can be chosen among dozens of presets.
We need not be a designer or a painter to use these apps. We
also do not require a lot of skills or prior knowledge of creating a painting, but
just a desire to make something. The market is so full of intuitive and
creative apps, we have to just find one that suits our personal style, and dive
into our next digital masterpiece.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Tablets for Education!!
Toddler and
pre-schoolers take to the iPad and iPhone like the proverbial duck to water.
There's something so intuitive and simple about touching things on the screen
that they just dive in without needing to be shown how it all works.
Even children as young
as 3 years of age can use an iPad to some degree, so long as you're careful about
them not damaging it. Having a case that's tough enough to protect it from
the inevitable bumps and scrapes it's going to have to endure is good idea. The most
amazing part of technology is the same child (read my 5 year old son) who can’t
even hold a pencil without dropping it twice will be able to handle a tablet for
hours together without getting it scratched. Yes that’s the beauty of a
gadget……so why not exploit it for the benefit of the parents too. Let’s
not deny the fact that even the
adults too always find this tablet pretty amazing… The day I bought an Ipad, it
was just for the heck of new technology in my hands. Frankly, for the
first few days I thought it was just an instrument for using facebook
conveniently. The other thing that was bothering me was that the iPad didn’t
have Word Processor or Publisher, then how was I going to use it for planning my
work. But within couple of months I
discovered more and more apps and I became confident with the device. I was sure
that an investment in this technology was going to be worthwhile and ultimately
I could even use it to impact children's
learning. Actually I realized this when my then 4 year old, was showing
interest and was wanting to play more and more with it. He had his own folder
of kids game and kids study on the iPad. To my surprise whenever I asked him to
study, he happily bought the iPad and learnt to count, do simple subtraction
and addition problems, recognize different shapes, listen to stories, learn alphabets, begin to spell out words and
learn how to write letters, all this with very little guidance or support - he
was having fun learning! Even My train journeys had become interesting. Earlier
when my son use to bother me and others in the compartment with his dare devil stunts,it used to leave me aghast. Now train journeys have converted into fun
learning journeys with more and more mother-child bonding.
If we thought that
ipad does wonders with only tiny ones than we are not aware of the fact of how it can help with the teenagers who are always struggling with some or the other
assignment. If you have a word the parent of some 10-12 year child, you will
hear all the frightful stories about their projects. Now here if someone gives your child a professional assistance for
brainstorming, analyzing and organizing information, planning projects, and
studying, what would call him as – Nothing just an App.
I can safely conclude that these gadgets are one of the
best educational devices designed for children’s learning and entertainment and
if one really wants to, one can exploit them to any extent possible.
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