Technology in my classroom

My classroom consists of 22 Imacs loaded with Adobe Creative Suite 3. Throughout the year my students learn to use Illustrator, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, InDesign and Acrobat in their designs.

This year I had several students who had prior Photoshop experience, so I gave the assignment to get online and find a tutorial on something they wanted to learn, and share it with the class. I printed the tutorials, but next year I will start a wiki so students can refer to the tutorials whenever they want and be paperless. The project worked because students could choose a tutorial that was at or just above their knowledge level of Photoshop. I'll probably use that again in other software, too, because it takes a lot of pressure off of me and it is always better when students learn from each other.

Next year I plan to add an online component to my class. Because my school is experiencing declining enrollment, I opened up my class to 30 students. I have 2 classrooms side by side, a hands-on room and a computer lab. The idea is that half the class will be drawing and the other half on the computers using the online environment. This will force them to read more, which is always a goal.

I also have an online class through District 287 and I am using Wordle, Glogster and Animoto already. I want to find some online free drawing software; I know it's out there somewhere. I want to add an online critique with the site where you can put up a piece of work and others can comment on it.

My plans are to increase both the use of technology in my class and the hands on time for drawing, planning on paper, storyboarding, journaling and sketching. My thought is that those activities combined result in the most opening up of the brain so knowledge can pour in.