Technology Workshop Handouts

(http://www.wam.umd.edu/~toh/Handouts.html)

A 28-page handout, in PDF format, for a basic digital photography course. Basic PC Operation; Choosing a Digital Camera; Using Picasa; Photo Downloading and Organization in Picasa; Practice Task for Picasa; How to Order Prints from Walmart from within Picasa; Loading Pictures onto a Photo Frame; Which Program Should I Use?; The Different Kinds of Disks; Using the Common Tasks menu in Windows XP; Importing Images into Documents; Overview of Digital Photography; How to get your email from any computer; Choosing and Using a Scanner; Making Video Slide Shows to show on TV; Adding External Storage to Your Computer.

A simple approach for creating multimedia projects for publication on the Web,incorporating prepared graphics, images, and recorded sounds. Organize class-based Web projects related to a curriculum topic in which each student in the class contributes the content (writing and artwork). Includes simple, ready-to-use templates for Slide Shows, Alphabet books, etc. Requires only software that is already on your computer. Uses and reinforces basic computer skills (such as renaming and moving files). 20-page handout, in PDF format.

Selecting a digital camera. Using Windows to download pictures from a digital camera, organize photo files, print your pictures, send pictures via email, copy pictures to CD-R. Using a scanner to scan prints. Installing and using Picasa 2. Installing Paint Shop Pro X at home. Rotating, cropping, sharpening, adjusting brightness and contrast, setting exact photo size for print-outs, color correction, recovering faded and dark photos, "one-step photo fix". Using Paint Shop Pro to repair old and damaged photos; redeye removal; printing several pictures on one page; selective adjustment to portions of a photo. Adding text labels and captions to photos; importing images into other computer programs; making a photo collage; artistic and creative effects. Free Web-based photo album sites. Introduce Shutterfly on line (uploading your pictures to a website for free so that others can view them). Using layers: how to cut out a portion of one photo to paste into another photo. Making slideshows of still images. Making video slide shows to show on TV with a DVD player. Introduce creative projects to do (newsletter, greeting card, etc.); HP website projects. Handouts available in RTF and PDF formats (35 pages total).

Digital Sound and Music (2006)
http://www.wam.umd.edu/~toh/adulted/SoundandMusic/
http://www.wam.umd.edu/~toh/sound/

Introduction to digital sound recording and playback. 35-page handout in PDF format. Digitizing sounds with a microphone and from a tape recorder. Use of sound processing software to edit, amplify, display sounds graphically, and change file formats. Downloading sounds from the internet. File formats and sound player programs for au, wav, aiff, and mp3 files. Playing sounds in Web pages, slide shows, and Powerpoint presentations. constructing an audible alphabet book. Copying songs to your hard disk from your audio CDs. Recording (burning) custom audio CDs from sounds and music files on your hard disk. Converting audio tapes and vinyl records to audio CDs. Reducing noise in old recordings. Making slideshows with background music. MIDI: downloading, arranging, and playing MIDI songs. Computer Karaoke. Handouts available in RTF and/or PDF formats.

Part 1: Digital Photography Review: choosing a digital camera, downloading pictures from your camera, organizing your photo files, printing your pictures, sending pictures via email, copying pictures to a CD-R disk, basic photo editing with Paint Shop Pro, correcting common photographic flaws, choosing and using a scanner, how to send photos on the Internet using Shutterfly. Part 2: Advanced Digital Photography: Review of basics, overview of tools in Paint Shop Pro, adding text labels, artistic and creative effects, creating a photo collage, how to make multi-layer images, automating repetitive actions, making your digital still images into video slide shows to watch on TV, using clip art, importing images into other applications, scanning cartoons and logos, color extraction, colorizing black and white photos.

Survey of methods for locating and evaluating information on the Internet: What if I get too many hits? What if I get too few hits? What determines the order in which the hits are listed? What to do with the links that you find?

Overview of freeware, shareware, demos and Web sites that support open- ended, discovery-oriented, creative, constructive experiences, with the emphasis on science and math. January 5, 2001

A technology-enhanced discovery lesson on the stars, planets, moon and sun as seen from Earth. Middle-school level. Uses the shareware planetarium simulator program CyberSky as well as several Web sites. Print out and duplicate this Student Worksheet for your students to record their observations and answers. January 5, 2001

A technology-enhanced discovery lesson on the science and mathematics of color. Middle-school level. Uses the freeware color selection program RGBtoHEX from No-Nonsense Software. Print out and duplicate this Student Worksheet for your students to record their observations and answers. January 5, 2001

Presented at the Fulbright Teacher Exchange Orientation Program, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, July, 2000.

Questions and answers about digital imaging and photography: scanners, digital cameras, resolution, troubleshooting, image manipulation software.

How to convert a KidPix SlideShow created on a Macintosh into HTML format for publication on the Web. Using this method, each slide is shown full-size on a separate page, along with navigation buttons for moving between the slides and a sound button for playing the accompanying recorded sound. No Knowledge of HTML is required.

How to improve the look and reduce the file size of digital photographs and computer graphics. Illustrated with lots of graphic examples.

The class project template is a set of files that serve as a template to facilitate the construction of a Web site for displaying a project created by a class of students. It consists of a chain of 30 "student" pages (each with a picture and a paragraph of text), an index (table of contents) that links to each student page, a title page (with a graphic), and a set on ancillary pages (a Bibliography page, a Related Sites page, and a "How we did it" page). The template contains all the "HTML" coding needed, including links between pages and navigation arrow icons.

A two-page table of all the essential HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language) tags, with templates that you can Copy and Paste into your own HTML pages.

A tutorial on HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language), with working examples. Explains how to create your own Web pages from scratch. Includes text formatting, graphics, hyperlinks, sound, lists, and tables, etc.

A step-by-step procedure for creating you own Web page with text, pictures, and digitized sound bites. Includes templates to simplify construction.

A step-by-step procedure for producing multimedia Macintosh Hypercard stacks containing text, color pictures, and digitized sound. Covers capturing still video images with VideoSpigot and Macintosh AV digitizers, adding text, and digitizing sound bites. Based on a set of Hypercard templates that are separately available.

Graphic Converter is an excellent Macintosh $35 shareware program for performing a number of useful manipulations on digitized images, such as converting between different file formats, compressing, resizing, adjusting color, contrast, and brightness, sharpening, and otherwise touching up scanned images and other bitmap graphics.