Using your Mobile Phone in Teaching - Discussion Group 19th August 2013

We had a small group  meet on Broome and Derby Campuses via Video Conference - unfortunately our colleagues at Kununurra were left out of the loop by a destroyed VC camera.  Hopefully they will read this and catch up with some of the information

Brad Durack, one of KTI's trade lecturers, is not only a carpenter by trade but he is also a professional photographer.  Brad shared some of his tricks using his mobile phone in every day work.  Two ways he uses his phone are:

1. To record evidence using still photographs, video footage and audio recording.
2. Relaying information from his mobile phone to a screen in a classroom

Recording Evidence

Brad went through the basics of photography with us - with an iPhone or smart phone it is mainly just point and shoot, but he warned us to be mindful of lighting.  If we have a subject in a room we wish to video or photograph, make sure we have light coming in from a window or door, and/or plenty of artificial light from electric lights, and that the subject is facing into the light, not against the light.

In addition, Brad shared some apps that will help us to have more options with our photography.  One such app for the iPhone is Camera+  which provides additional options for shooting photographs that may not come with your basic iPhone package - features such as different shooting modes and touch exposure and focus that extend what is already on the phone.  It is $1.99 in the App store.  

Editing Photos - on your device

Once you have taken your photos, it is necessary to make sure the size and quality are correct for the purpose.  For example if you intend inserting the photo into a page on Blackboard or a blog, it is best to keep the size medium to small, or it will take ages for it to load on the page.  Likewise, if you want to send the image by SMS or email, it needs to be a small size.  You may also wish to crop the photo, or add effects.

Brad demonstrated how to do this very simply on your device once you have taken the shot.  On an iPhone, go to Camera Roll, select the photo, and you will see options for cropping, enhancing and sharing.  If you decides to share by email or upload to a social networking site, it will give you the option to resize to a suitable size.  There is a similar process on your smart phone.

As well as this simple, immediate way of editing your photos, you have access to many apps for iPad, iPhones, smart phones and tablets in their respective app stores. to use in editing and enhancing your photos. 

One useful app is Collage for iPhone (there are heaps of collage apps out there for both iPhone and other smart phones - it's a question of exploring and finding what you like).  This app enables you to create interesting collages from your photographs, free for "Lite" and 99c for the full version

Two other apps for adding effects and editing your photos are Photoshop Express which is free (although apparently in the latest version you have to make "in app purchases" of the good stuff such as different effects) and Art Studio which is 99c and is excellent for digital drawing, painting and editing images.  Art Studio allows you to re-size photos, crop, add text, draw on and many other functions with images.  An app for iPhones that allows you to draw on or add text to photographs is Phonto  which is free, or 99c for the ad free version.

Some Android apps that are similar to above are Image Editor and Photo Studio - two free apps that have a range of editing and enhancement tools, including re-size and crop.

Editing Photos - on a Windows 7 desktop

Often you may want to upload your photos to your desktop for further editing, or you may have downloaded an image from the internet to use in your teaching materials.  Windows has a basic image editing program called Paint that is easy to use.  I have created a document about this and Windows Picture Manager (good for a quick re-size to predefined dimensions).  You can find this document on Google Docs here

In this document there are also suggestions for other free programs for desktop photo editing.

Storing and sharing and using your images

 

File types and sizes

 Images can be very large files, so it helps to understand a little about different file types and how much they compress the size of the image.  The larger the image, the longer it will take to load on a  web page (for example Blackboard LMS or a blog) and the less likely your email will accept it as an attachment.

There is a handy web page that sets out all the different image file types and what their different purposes are, here - this page is part of a website about digital photography for beginners which seems very good and easy to understand.  I have summarised the main points about image file types in a Word document you can locate at Google Docs here

The other reason it is important to understand different image file types is that if you share an image that is saved as a file type other than the commonly used jpeg (or jpg) file, or possibly a png file, the person you share it with will be unlikely to have a program to open it with.

Storage and sharing of images

Even when compressed, image files can take up a lot of space when there are many of them and there is a limit to our space on our personal and shared drives within KTI.  So it is worth considering other options for storage.

When you are using Apple technology such as an iPad or iPhone, you can stream your photos directly to iCloud - how and when you do this depends on what you do to your iCloud and Photo settings - on your iPhone for example, you can have your Photo Stream and Dcouments and Data turned on, so that everything is streamed automatically from your iPhone to your iCloud account.  Or you can turn them off, and send individual files to iCloud.  Privacy settings allow you to share from iCloud to the people you want to share with, or to remain private.

A similar system can work with Android devices and Google Drive.  Google Drive is a Cloud based storage system where you can keep large files, and set your privacy to suit your needs - to share with the public, to selected people, or to remain private.

Drop Box is another free Cloud Based storage space for large files, and the sharing and privacy options are similar to the above.

It is now possible, with iPhones and iPads, to obtain a wifi SD card that can be put into any device and allow that device to synchronise with your iPad or iPhone.  So you can save your image files to your desktop for later if you wish.  The best part though, is that that you can connect your iPhone or iPad to a TV screen (and possibly a Smartboard - I would need to check this out)  in a classroom wirelessly, and display what is in your device to a class,whether it is an educational app, images, video clips or a document.

Next Group Discussion Meeting

Our next Peer Group Discussion for mobile technology is to be 2nd September at 3.30 pm and we are going to look at shooting video clips from our mobile devices, editing, storage and use.

Feel free to comment below, share your experiences and ask questions!