Professional reflection

Todays is ICT very important area of art&design teaching in primary school and because of that in first of all I want to criticize the order we were taught about photo editing and the software we used for it.

The quality of teaching photo editing was bad and I found lessons poorly prepared when we had them. We were taught making photo montage first and manipulating still images after it. I'd teach them other way definitely as knowledge you get when working with only one photo and its layers are needed and has to be developed before you shouldn't even think about doing it with many pictures at same time. I cannot find any reason why to do it the way we did.

I'd also use free softwares always in this level as most students have so less experience to use any photo editors. If we are expected to teach something about it in primary school, why not to use softwares that can be used in any school in any country and without any financial problems or troubles with recourses. There are some free softwares to download in Internet which are good enough for every primary school usage and enhancing everyday pictures. I've been using a software called GIMP (I use it even when working with pictures I get paid of) in this manipulation, mostly because it is free for every one, it is available in many languages and there are good manuals available in Internet too. The manual can be found in the address http://docs.gimp.org/2.8/en/. 

Some basics about copyright should be told to children when there are all the pictures in Internet 'kind-of-for-free-using' for anyone. If not, pictures used in this kind of tasks should be taken by themselves or someone they know and has given them their acceptance to use them. Even though these tasks are made only for themselves and not for publishing, I think school is the right place to teach this kind of values.

Artists I'd familiarize children to are Jan von Holleben (photographing and photo manipulation http://www.janvonholleben.com) and Anne Geddes (photo montages http://www.annegeddes.com). When it comes to animation and videos, Cowly Owl (http://www.cowlyowl.com) may be helpful website for a teacher.