Beautiful Robot Art

My Red Tie

Click over to 30 Beautiful Artworks of Robots to get a great sampling of some beautiful robot themed graphics.  Never know when a good robot picture might come in handy?

[Image: "My Red Tie" by arcipello captured from Six Revisions: 30 Beautiful Artworks of Robots; http://sixrevisions.com/digital-art/30-beautiful-artworks-of-robots/]

Worth 1000

Worth 1000 is a website where folks compete in photography and photo manipulation.  I haven't been here for a while, and it looks like they've redesigned the site.  It also looks like they are more closely associated with the Aviary online tools. 

I often come here when I am trying to come up with ideas for my Multimedia classes.  I've adapted some of the contests I've seen here into classroom lessons.  I don't usually visit the site live during class, as there can be inappropriate for school content.  They've also added a multimedia section that I don't remember seeing before that includes other media such as sound.  Use your judgment on using in the classroom based on the level of your students.


Here is a recent illustration contest: Literary Scenes - Worth1000 Contests.  The scene above was taken from this slide show and is called "The House of Usher" by bajazet.

button design

My web design students love to make buttons for their pages. They often don't put much thought into them, but they like to make them. The prettier. The flashier. All the better.

They hate modifying a button after it's been made. I suspect the same complaint is made by English teachers about getting students to revise/edit their work. The attitude seems to be do it once and it's done. Already done that once. Why do it again?

One of the questions I often ask when I'm looking at a design is "What does this button do?". Too many times I hear, "You click it to find out." (Which means in kid talk....I forget.) I then state that if I have to start clicking buttons just to see what they do, I'm probably going to move on to another web site. I then try to guide the discussion towards what is the best design for a button; an icon, text or both?

Here is a short article that gives the advantages of each choice. The bottom line according to this article: Text and image combination work best.

Devolve Me

Who wouldn't want to see what they would have looked like if they'd been born 500,000 years ago. Load your picture up into Devolve Me and get a peek at your distant ancestors. You can see the movie of the de-evoloution of myself shown in stills above or go to the main site, upload your picture and get a glimpse of your own family tree.

The rest of the site has some information about Darwin and promo for a course offered through the Open University. This summer they will have some video of a lecture given by Richard Dawkins. Interesting but the main draw here for me is the morphing program.

[via GeekDad]
[Image: Captured from Devolve movie made at http://www.open.ac.uk/darwin/devolve-me.php]

Animation Site

I was preparing a simple unit on animation for my multimedia kids and wanted a good reference on creating a walking figure. Much harder than it sounds if you have never tried it before, but all my kids eventually want to create a walking person for their projects. I needed to find some good reference drawings to show them.

I Googled. I sorted.

I discovered this website, Idleworm. It has some great information on creating a decent walking character along with some helpful pictures to demonstrate what the author is talking about.

[image: Captured from http://www.idleworm.com/how/anm/02w/walk1.shtml]

Invisibilia: Photoshop Activity

Cool tutorial on replacing a part of a photo with a drawing. I find them strangely intriguing. In particular, the ones where there is more than one person in the picture. Invisibilia is the web site where the author of the tutorial has posted a bunch of examples. Warning: There is some nudity here. So take a look before you share with students. The top picture here is off the site. The second is one I did following the tutorial.

The author has this to say about the photos:

Maybe the pictures illustrate the idea that we all want to remove ourselves from life, and replace ourselves with fictional, self-created versions of ourself. We want to fictionalise our own existence, and impose order and narrative where there is none. Or maybe it's just tracing. Either way, I hope you enjoy the pics.

I'll be trying it out with my multimedia kids later this year. It isn't hard to do as long as you have Photoshop or some other program that lets you work with layers. I put this one together in about 15 minutes.




















[via Make]

[First Image: "Invisible Phone": Captured from Invisiblia: http://www.themanwhofellasleep.com/invisibilia.html]
[2nd Image: Group shot from a DU Poetry Slam (2008): Modified by Al Gunn]

Population Density Chart

We talked a lot about the effects of over population back in the seventies. There was a famous often quoted experiment with mice where the little ones were allowed to reproduce all willy-nilly (as mice are wont to do) within a confined space with a finite food supply. The results were always grim. The more crowded they got, the more violent and abhorrent their behavior. If this were true with humans, we should see more violence in countries where the population density is greater. Doesn't seem to hold true.

This chart by Charles Platt (Boing Boing) is a visual representation of population density. He was trying to answer the question:

To what extent do we feel overcrowded, as a species? I’m not talking about resources; just psychological factors.

He concluded that open space isn't really necessary for our mental health.

I wonder if it isn't more of a factor of where we are raised and how we spent our youth. I live in the Denver area. Grew up here. Much of my recreational time was spent going up into the mountains. My dad's idea of a good time was to go as deep into the woods as possible and fish for a week or two. If we ran into someone else, we didn't go far enough.

I lived on the east coast for a while in a rural area of Maryland. I was never able to find that "empty space" feeling I could get in Colorado except Christmas day on the beach. We could walk for an hour or two and never see another person. A woman out there once confided to me that she could never live out west because the towns were too far apart. It scared her when she and her husband were vacationing there. I yearned for what she feared.

I like cities. I like the wilderness. If you made me choose one over the other. Pick a place I would spend the rest of my life. I think it would have to be the wide open spaces. I could give up the city. I don't think I could give up the wilderness.

Think I'll show this to my students and see what they make of it.

[Image captured from Boing Boing: "Charts 3":http://www.boingboing.net/2009/01/30/charts-3.html]

Fireworks Tutorials

I've decided to use Adobe Fireworks as the graphics editor of choice in my classes. I've always been a fan of Photoshop and have used it for years. This semester I am teaching in a lab that doesn't have Photoshop installed. The cost of outfitting the machines with a program that will only be used this one semester is prohibitive. We do have Fireworks in the lab. In fact, we have a site license for the entire school. I was going to just use Fireworks in my one class and Photoshop in my others when I decided to go all out and teach it in all my web classes because:

• It is available on every computer
• It edits both vector and raster graphics
• Doing certain tasks are easier in Fireworks than Photoshop (less steep of a learning curve).
• If kids are into the graphics they can always move on to explore Photoshop or Illustrator.

The problem. I am not as adept at using Fireworks. So, what's a geek like me to do? I immediately started looking for tutorials online. I've found some good ones and I plan on sharing some of the better sites I find here. The first being a site put up by Joyce Evans who has written several how-to-books on Fireworks and Dreamweaver. She offers up a lot of video tutorials which are simple to follow and descriptions of books and DVDs you can purchase.

I've found the online video tutorials to be simple and easy to follow. I've gotten several lesson ideas already. Someday, I'd like to have a series of videos similar to this available for my students who miss a class or just don't get it the first time. Until then, I may point them to these easy to use clips. (Have to check to see if it's blocked by my district first.)

[Image captured from Adobe web site]

The Fifty United States and Their Mottos

This needlpoint of the United States and their mottos by Emily Wick is great fun. I was having a good time deciphering the phrases when the thought struck me that this could be adapted for a graphics project for my Multimedia students. They would get to practice several skills:

• Looking up information
• Inserting a graphic into a specific shape (they'd get to practice this bit 50 times)
• Making it pleasing to the eye (design)

Then I got to thinking (once I start it's hard to get this old rusty train of a mind to stop) that you could do a variety of things using a map of the states to represent concepts graphically. An activity could be designed to show the kids how to present information in a graphical way. I came up with several ideas.

• Census information (population/density/age/ethnicity/etc)
• Date each state became a part of the union
• Picture of a famous person from that state inserted into that state
• State Flower (oooooooo pretty!)

I also thought of creating two maps that show two different aspects and then let the kids pull out correlations like:

• wealth and murder rate
• population and environmental rating (how green)
• wealth and money spent on each student

I don't know what the correlation is but it would be interesting to find out. I might even let the students brainstorm their own correlations to test. I used to do this with blank maps and colored pencils back in olden times. Maybe it's time to update it?

What else could the kids represent graphically on a map of the states?

[Note: Strange Maps also had a post on this map and included a list of all the mottos and a history of their origin.]

[via Neatorama]
[Image captured from Two Eyeballs: http://www.twoeyeballs.com/]

Color Square Illusion

I saw this on the web and the description said that squares A and B were the same color. I thought it was a misprint as I knew that those two squares were not the same color.

I squinted. I moved across the room. I looked at it from extreme angles. I held up two strips of paper on my screen to block out the green rod and the other squares. They still looked like two different shades. I knew that those two colors were not the same.

I decided I would prove it and send a comment exposing this as an evil sham designed to strain the eyes of the unwary. I downloaded the picture from the site and opened it up in Photoshop.

• Test One: Using the eyedropper tool I captured the hex color in each square. They were the same. I didn't believe it and did it again. Repeatedly. I found a slight variation in a few stray pixels, but for all practical purposes they were the same.
• Test Two: Using the lasso tool, I captured a segment of square A and then pasted it into it's own layer. I then moved the square back and forth between the two squares. Freaky! It seemed to change color as I moved it.
  
• Test Three: Using the lasso tool, I captured a segment of each square and pasted them onto their own layer. Then I hid the original picture and moved the two squares side by side. Without the original picture, they looked the same. My convictions were getting pretty shaky by now.
• Test Four: I grabbed the color from square A and using the brush tool I painted the area between the two squares the same color. As I did this, suddenly, I could see they were the same. I no longer believe what I see.
  

I read the explanation on the site and it didn't make sense to me. In the comments section an anonymous poster wrote this:

"In the real world, this wouldn't be the same grey, as B square is in the shadow of the column, so our smart brain corrects what it receives from the eye and optic nerve, and tells us that B square "must" (should?) be lighter than A square."

That explanation makes a bit more sense to me than the more technical one on the site. Either way it is a fascinating illusion.

Update: Visited the original site today and they've added a couple of graphics that help you see that the two squares are the same. Must of had a bunch of non-believers write to say, "No way!"

[Image: Captured from Might Optical Illusions: http://www.moillusions.com/2006/03/colored-squares-illusion.html]

Word Cloud using Wordle

Wordle is one of those applications that creates a word cloud. That is, it will take all the text you give it and create a graphic where words that are repeated more often are printed larger. Words that are used less frequently are printed smaller. The cloud at the top of this post is made up of the lyrics from the Beatle's tune, "Let it Be".



The Gettysburg Address looks like this as a word cloud in Wordle.
















I know there are other applications that can do this so with that in mind I went to Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day and did a search for "word clouds". He had a post (Larry has a post on everything!) and discusses two such programs. Wordle is one and Tag Crowd the other. I looked at Tag Crowd and did the Gettysburg Address to compare the two. You can see the results using Tag Crowd below.




















I like Wordle better. It gives me more options than Tag Crowd including control over the color and some font selections. Do be aware that if you use Wordle, the content at the site isn't censored and kids can see some inappropriate words in the gallery. If this were a big issue, I might choose Tag Crowd.

I recently had a technical glitch with a lesson plan in my Multimedia class and needed a quick distraction for my class. I had the kids find the lyrics to a song they liked (with appropriate language) and then paste it into Wordle and experiment with the different parameters. They entertained themselves for a good twenty minutes trying different songs. I threw out the suggestion that they put in a political speech or two and the race was off to put in snippets from different candidates. My experience with this has got me to thinking about creating a design project using a word cloud as part of a collage.

Google Doodle Contest

Google is sponsoring a contest for k-12 students called "Doodle 4 Google". Using the theme "What if...?" students doodle over the famous Google logo to create something unique such as the example I have here for Einstein's birthday. If selected, it will be posted on their site for a day and the student wins a prize as does the school.

They offer teacher resource guides with suggestions for activities to use with your students. If you are going to participate notice that you need to register your school. The topic is so broad it could be tied into a social studies or science class fairly easily. Make it an interdisciplinary project. Venture beyond that dusty old computer lab and talk to some of those other teachers who work in your building. Check it out...it could be fun.

• Register by March 28, 2008.
• Doodle Entry Deadline is April 12, 2008.
• State Finalists and Regional Winners notified by May 7, 2008
• Online Public Vote May 12-18, 2008
• Awards Ceremony and National Winners Announced on May 21, 2008
• Winning Doodle on the Google Homepage may 22, 2008

Video of various doodles that have been used in the past.



Interesting video showing a doodle being designed. When kids ask if anyone uses a program like Illustrator, show them this. (Not sure if it is Illustrator....but it's a vector program of some sort?)



[Image: Captured from Doodle for Google: http://www.google.com/doodle4google/]

Royalty Free Photos

Discovered this source royalty free stock photos, Public Domain Pictures. After a quick look, I found several photos I thought I could use in presentations or for the blog. The authors only ask that you credit them.

Month or so ago I was searching for a free picture of a gravestone. This image from their collection would have met my needs perfectly. There is a wide variety of pictures. Weakest selection seems to be of people but still worth keeping the link. They have a nice selection of shots with a white background. Perfect for those Photoshop composites.



[Image: Petr Kratochvil; "Painting with light on cemetery"; Public Domain Pictures.net; http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=122]

Build Your Wild Self

My good friend Chuck has come out of retirement to run the computer classes at an elementary school part-time. Most of his experience has been with secondary students and he has been thinking a lot about what he is going to teach. Especially, adapting lessons for those younger kids. His first day at the new job a tiny little person came up to him and said shyly in her tiny, little person voice,

"I've never had a boy teacher before."

He was elated to be referred to as a boy. I told him that the kids may be referring to him as a boy, but all those young teachers are already referring to him as "gramps." Some days he hates me.

I said I'd keep my eye out for age appropriate web sites and I almost immediately stumbled on this site, Build Your Wild Self, put up by the The New York Zoos and Aquarium. It's based on Maurice Sendak's book, Where the Wild Things Are. First you create a picture of yourself. Gray hair was not an option here so I had to settle for a nice golden brown. Then you add various animal parts until you get the right amount of "wild" in your picture.

It was easy to use. The interface was clearly laid out and it was fun to play with the various options. The origin of each animal part is also described. The tongue in my picture is an "Anaconda snake tongue." I could envision using this activity as a jumping off point to talk about the animals used in constructing a wild thing.

My only problem was getting the finished picture off the web site. I was able to send an email to myself (and Chuck). I could create a desktop for my computer. I couldn't simply save a copy of the picture. This may be an issue with Firefox as I didn't try it in a different browser. I was able to do a screen capture but that might be a little advanced for younger kids. It's a minor complaint and wouldn't stop me from recommending it.

Good Luck Chuck. Those kids are lucky to have a great "boy" teacher like you!

Cool Visualizations

Fell into this site while searching for something else. I love that about the web! Here are the winners of the Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.

The picture shown here is a photograph of Irish moss taken by Andrea Ottesen. I selected this image because it was taken with a 7-megapixel point and shoot camera. Felice Frankel, one of the judges, is quoted in the article saying, "We shouldn't forget that we don't need [complex equipment and techniques] to create beautiful representations."

[Just before I was about to post this I found a link and description of the challenge by David Warlick on his blog 2¢ Worth. Another cool picture. More links.]

[Image: Ottesen, Andrea. "2007 visualization Challenge Winners." Science. 28 Sept 2007. Science Magazine. 2 Oct 2007 .]

Why not just One BIG Picture?

I had a student ask me once,

"Why don't we just design web pages in Photoshop and then load the picture as the whole page. It would look so much better!"

I stammered on about file size but I don't think I was very convincing as the student countered with,

"What about slicing the image up Mr. G? Huh! What about that? The files would be smaller!"

I answered with that sly teacher ploy,

"Wasn't that the bell?"

Wish I had this article, PSD to Web Page which is much more articulate than I in explaining why it is better to use good html/css design. In a nutshell, the reasons one big image is less desirable are:

1. Requires tables to hold sliced images.
2. Hard to manage and update.
3. And a biggie....not search engine friendly.

I am so much smarter if I get one or two months to think about my answers. I wonder why my students never understood how clever I am?

Mischook, Stefan. "PSD to Web Page." Killersites.com Blog. 20 Sep 2007. Killersites.com. 22 Sep 2007 .
[Image: Ruminer, David . "Scary Monster Man." Private Collection. 2005.]

HowTo: Extract pictures from a PowerPoint presentation

This dilemma came up a couple of times last year at my school. Person comes to me in a rush and wants to get a picture out of PowerPoint. In both cases, since time was an issue, I just grabbed a screenshot. I promised myself that someday I would find out how to do this, but it has never made it to the top of my to-do list.

When I stumbled across this post I thought, "Aha! I knew there had to be an easy way!" Export the PowerPoint as a web page and the pictures will all be put in a file. Simple. Easy to do.

Go to this article, Extract Pictures from PowerPoint Photo Slideshows - Simple Hack to get a detailed explanation. While you are there, browse around Digital Inspiration. You're bound to have one or two "aha" moments yourself.

"Extract Pictures from PowerPoint Photo Slideshows." Digital Inspiration. 2007. Digital Inspiration. 16 Sep 2007 .