Picture Editing

I chose this picture because it represents one of my most favorite places to vacation. This is a view from my cabin in the Smokey Mountains. You can see that the mountian's look "smokey" in the background. The picture also shows the distance and height of the mountains from my view.

This is the orginal picture of my parents and I!

This is the edited version of the picture that you see above. It's pretty clear that I don't really have a clue as to how to edit pictures to make them look better. As I was working to edit this picture I quickly found out that this was a poor quality picture to start with. I used several of the tools available to me however I found that I really did not understand what all the tools were and very clearly made the picture worse than the original! Pixlr would be a difficult tool for my first grade students to use. One must know a lot more about digital photography in order to use this tool and by looking at my new picture I think that I need more information too. I would need a more simple program, or more user friendly program for my little students to use. Even though students can sometimes be more tech savvy than us adults this tool was much too complicated. A more user friendly tool would allow my students to use the program. I have a great deal of technology available for use in my classroom. Students have access to Smart Boards on a daily basis as well as laptops so we could use these programs to create presentations on a variety of topics. In first grade right now we are creating procedural writing. I can evision my students creating a group presentation using picture editing tools to show a variety of "how to" topics that range from brushing your teeth to making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich all using pictures. With a little more experience on my part I think that this is something that could work well for my class. In fact I'll get on it and see how it works!