Manipulating images with Gimp

This is a sample of manipulating photos using Gimp, the GNU Image Manipulation Program:

Original image: Bill Rodanidis is presenting Greece to his classmates

Original image: The teachers room in the Odolphuslyceum in Tilburg

Manipulated image: Bill Rodanidis is standing in the teachers room!

Gimp is a very powerful image processing software that is free to download and use in your computer. It runs in many platforms. You may use the Scissors Select Tool to extract portions of an image and then copy paste the selected portion to another image to have your manipulated photo.

Photoshop is a powerful, yet commercial, image processing tool you may wish to use. Photoshop Express Editor allows you to do some powerful image editing of your snapshots. I suppose you know many other image processing tools, many of them running online, so please feel free to suggest some of them by commenting to this post.

Our findings about facts vs. opinions

This week our Comenius team worked on the facts vs. opinions unity. Students worked in pairs, filled the online form and then we discussed our findings.

Then we all watched some online and TV ads and discussed about what is true and what is not true in them.

Here is the first ad we watched:

which is a misleading ad that was aired in the Greek TV.

Another example of a disputable or rather misleading ad is the following:

Students were also presented of some additional TV ads of products and then we compared them with some ads from NGOs.

A facts vs. opinions form

While a fact is a statement that can be proven true, an opinion expresses someone's belief, feeling, view, idea, or judgement about something or someone. In this exercise you will determine whether a statement is an opinion or a fact. Hint: try noticing "signal" words which indicate opinion or fact statements.

Then you may play the fact or opinion games:

• http://www.quia.com/jq/24723.html 
• http://www.quia.com/pop/12709.html

Then we can all discuss why it is important to be able to distinguish between fact and opinion in advertisements.

Safer Internet Day video

SID 2014 video spot questionnaire by http://www.saferinternet.gr/

Going ahead with the ads

Today our Comenius group had a very fruitful and promising at the same time meeting. We concluded on what is left to be done on our blogs and started commenting on our friends blogs from other countries.


Seven students with a teacher started working an idea on how to present our MAGIC Comenius project, social media and advertising to the youngest students of the school. One idea they came up with is by acting. The rest of the team found it very interesting and thought it would be funny as well!

Facts vs. opinions in ads

This is our second week working on theme two which is about advertising and we will be exploring facts vs. opinions in advertisements. 

So this week we hope you will develop criteria for determining statements of opinion and practice discerning statements of opinion in advertisements.

You must have realized by now that smart consumers need to be able to distinguish between fact and opinion in advertisements. To do so you should be able to demonstrate literal, inferential, and evaluative comprehension skills by distinguishing between fact and opinion.



As teachers of the MAGIC Comenius project we will use the facts vs. opinions in ads guide document* to achieve the above and we hope we all enjoy it! 

* Source: http://www.educationoasis.com

Who does what in the following weeks

The MAGIC project evolves and we are also getting ready for our second visit to Koper, Slovenia. So we thought of writing a list of who does what in the following weeks:

Online magazine:

1) Vasilis Rodanidis, 2) Malta Kourtoglou and 3) Dimtris Xilogiannis will have to contact their friends from other schools and collaborate to create an online magazine about the themes of the project. Please ask one of your Comenius teachers for more information.

Online comic book:

1) John Kazantzidis, 2) Marios Kaplanis, 3) Panagiota Diko and 4) Anastasis Karatzas will have to contact their friends from other schools and collaborate to create an online comic book about the themes of the project. You will be using the pixton.com website to create your comic books, so please get familiar with its environment as soon as possible. Please ask one of your Comenius teachers for more information.

Theme one - Social media editing:

1) Vasilis Tsamopoulos, Malta Kourtoglou, Erika Demolari and Magda Lytra are responsible about collecting all the answers from the groups and edit them as different posts on their blog. The posts must be written in an essay format like the post about Internet safety and responsible use with pictures and videos where appropriate. There is a deadline for this task which is, well, yesterday!

 

Commenting on theme one:

All of you should visit other students blogs and comment on their findings on theme one. Comments should be constructive in some way. Start by accessing the teachers websites in Germany, Norway, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and the Netherlands and then locate and access their students blogs.

Diary of Friday 29/11 in Tilburg:

Alexis Bazopoulos and Kostas Floros will have to write about our visit to De Pont Museum. Loukia Boularia and Despoina Tsakiri will write about our ice skating experience. John Kazantzidis will write about swimming in the pool and Dimitris Xilogiannis and Vasilis Rodanidis will write about our evening party.

Photo contest:

1) John Kazantzidis, 2) Kostas Floros, 3) Loukia Boulari, 4) Despoina Tsakiri, 5) Panagiota Kalampoki, 6) Dimitris Xilogiannis, 7) Malta Kourtoglou, 8) Vasilis Rodanidis, 9) Alexis Bazopoulos and 10) Panagiota Diko must upload on their blogstwo of their photos they took from our recent visit to the Netherlands so that they can participate to the photo contest.

Photo exhibition:

1) John Kazantzidis, 2) Kostas Floros, 3) Loukia Boulari, 4) Despoina Tsakiri, 5) Panagiota Kalampoki, 6) Dimitris Xilogiannis, 7) Malta Kourtoglou, 8) Vasilis Rodanidis, 9) Alexis Bazopoulos and 10) Panagiota Diko should upload on their blogs some of their best pictures so that we can prepare our photo exhibition.

Theme two - Advertising:

All of you are taking part to our second theme which is advertising. Please read the advertising theme description and timetable. This week's topic is about commercial advertising.

Next stop: Koper!

Now it is time to start getting ready for our second educational visit to Koper, Slovenia! The dates have already been set: 31 March - 7 April 2014.

Our partners in Koper have already prepared a timetable for all of us to follow:


Monday, 31/3: Arrival
Tuesday, 1/4: Visit to school, reception at the Town Hall, tour of Koper
Wednesday, 2/4: Workshops, tour of Piran and Portoroz

Thursday, 3/4: Excursion to the Postonja Cave and Predjama Castle
Friday, 4/4: Workshops, visit to the radio station and TV studio in Koper, visit to the Faculty of Media Studies in Koper
Saturday, 5/4: visit to Ljubljana
Sunday, 6/4: Sports at the Nature Park Strunjan
Monday, 7/4: Departure

We are all looking forward to meeting all of our students and teachers partners in Koper!

Critical Media Literacy: Commercial Advertising

Dear MAGICians! As you already have read at the advertising theme description and timetable, you will have the opportunity to start investigating the "Critical Media Literacy: Commercial Advertising" topic  between January 14 - 20. The full description of this session is available for you to read.

OVERVIEW

Studying the influence of mass media on our lives allows you to view advertising in a new light. This lesson provides you with the opportunity to look at mass media in a critical way. You become aware of the tremendous amount of advertising that we are exposed to on a daily basis. By looking at advertising critically, you begin to understand how the media oppresses certain groups, convinces people to purchase certain products, and influences culture.

STUDENT OBJECTIVES

Students will:

• Investigate the influence of advertising on their daily lives
• Engage in critical inquiry of mass media
• Identify hidden media messages
• Interpret messages presented through advertising
• Discuss the effect of advertising on culture

Read the full description of this session or jump to the advertising theme description and timetable! 

Advertising theme description and timetable

Hello dear MAGICians!

It’s about time to move on to our second theme which is advertising. All of us will be working in the following fields: TV, radio, magazine, Internet, junk mail and billboard (or street) advertisements or, to keep it short, ads.

Learning Objectives

Through the completion of this theme you will be able to:

• Understand the intersection of ads and art and their impact on consumerism.
• Develop criteria for determining statements of opinion and practice discerning statements of opinion in advertisements.
• Identify types of ads, analyse them, and respond to them.
• Analyse the persuasive techniques in ads
• Discover the rules of ads and check whether certain type of them bent or not the rules.
• Create your own artistic interpretations of advertisements, present them, and reflect upon the nature of consumerism in your lives.

Weekly topics

Week 1: Critical Media Literacy: Commercial Advertising: January 14 - 20
Weeks 2 & 3: Fact vs. opinions in ads: January 21 - February 3
Week 4: Truth in ads - Understanding the media: February 4 - 10
Week 5: Persuasive techniques in ads: February 11 -17
Week 6: Consumerism, ads and art intersection & rules in ads: February 18 - 24
Week 7: Creation of a marketing campaign of students choice: February 25 - March 3
Week 8: In class presentation of campaigns - uploading on blogs: March 4 - March 10
Week 9: Review and conclusions: March 11 - March 16

Collaborative tools

As we walk through the theme material you will find ads you want to share with the rest of the students from other countries and reflect on them. So what do you do with them and how do you share them with the rest of us? Well you can pin them using our pinterest board so everyone can see them!  Sign up at Pinterest using your facebook or google account.   

Also do not forget to regularly check for our facebook group updates and share your comments and ideas!

Theme one: Social media

Students teams have completed working on social media, the first theme of our project. Students were divided in five groups and were given five units - guidelines to follow, material to work and investigate and finally reflect on. Below you may read some of the questions students were faced and the slides they were provided to work with.

• Unit 1: What is social media? In this unit students had to explore some of the popular types of social media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook and YouTube) and then try to find what are their differences and/or similarities. They were also proposed to watch a couple of recommended videos and write what most surprised them and/or what is their opinion. Finally they were invited to check out http://mystarbucksidea.force.com for some interesting practice ideas and discuss them with their classmates. They all had to share their findings with their Comenius classmates. Here are the slides of Unit 1.

• Unit 2: School policies. Working on this unit students had to find their school website, whether it embraces any types of social media to it and if it hosts webpages in other languages than Greek. In order to get to know their classmates from abroad they were proposed to start at magicteachersthess.blogspot.gr and then try to locate and access their Comenius classmates school websites reporting if these websites provide a good idea of how their school work. They also had to access two educatioanl websites: 1) http://edubuzz.org/about/ and share with their classmates what strikes them most about it and 2) Saltash.net Community College in Cornwall website and discuss why this is a very progressive in social media school. So should or shouldn’t set up a school social media account and which social media account would you suggest for their school and why. Here are the slides of Unit 2.
• Unit 3: Pedagogical aspects. Students were invited to watch a short video on education reform and discuss in which ways it challenges the traditional models of education. Another issue to explore was cultural relevance. Based on the hypothesis that “young people are engaged when they are learning about things or with things that they can relate to or that are relevant to them”, students should give examples of the above statement from their own experience and share them on their blogs. Real-time data is a hot topic in social media so they were invited to share some ways of using Twitter in their classrooms. Collaboration may be achieved by using Google Apps for Education and Google Plus tools to assist with learning and teaching. Finally students were invited to investigate in which ways can blogs and YouTube channels provide an audience for student’s work. Here are the slides of Unit 3.
• Unit 4: Internet safety and responsible use. The main issues discussed in this unit were privacy and digital footprints. Students were invited to comment on the following statements: “Not only pupils, but also teachers need to think before they post” and “Schools should teach pupils how to analyse and evaluate the reliability of online information, how to reference the sources they use, and how to safeguard one’s privacy when using social media”. Here are the slides of Unit 4.
• Unit 5: Challenges to adoption. In this unit students had to consider what is a school social media policy and discuss if it is necessary for their school. They were also invited to work in teams to create a stand-alone policy with things/rules to include, consider some technical challenges of social media adoption and locate which ICT organisations cooperate with schools for Internet safety. Here are the slides of Unit 5.

All conclusions were sent to MAGIC 1 team that has to summarise them and upload them on their blog.