Computer skills are essential to success in our modern world. Many kids show great interest in computers which sometimes seems to boarder on addiction. My 13 year old daughter however, was quite the opposite. Much like my mother, computers gave her frustration when they didn't immediately respond as expected. Therefore, improving computer skills was part of her 8th grade school year.
As part of our interest-led approach to education, I had a personal goal to encourage her to deeper explore her own interests. My hope was that by exposing her to activities I thought she would enjoy, she would dig deeper on her own, thereby taking hold of her education. Dance is my daughter's hobby, so we discussed possibly creating a photo album of creative dance pictures using gIMP to get started.
gIMP is a free downloadable photo editing software package. It contains common photo editing capabilities such as altering brightness and colors of photos, as well as cropping and rotating. In addition, colors can be altered, photos can be meshed together, silhouettes can be created and so much more.
After downloading the software and briefly playing around with it, I directed my daughter to a few on-line tutorials - gIMP-Tutorials and gIMPpology. After trying them she was hooked.
Here is some of what she created.
By introducing her to a new aspect of two things she enjoys (dance and art), my daughter was able to gain valuable computer skills. This activity was perfect for her. It kept her busy learning and editing for the entire first half of the school year.
For more creative educational ideas, please visit the pages listed across the top of this blog.
My daughter will love this too! Thanks so much for linking up with us on the Hip Homeschool Hop!
ReplyDeleteI love seeing all this creativity! Pinning for when my daughter gets a bit older.
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