May 29, 2012
Hello Everyone,
Welcome to the Digital Photography online class. Digital Photography is a
natural to offer as an online class because of the ease in creating and posting
your work electronically. I find eLearning to be cumbersome in general and
have decided to publish the course syllabus on my own website, http://jnevins.com,
and run the entire experience using the web, a blog, and a public hosting
site. eLearning currently does not have the capacity to hold the number
of images you’ll be posting as part of this class.
Class runs from May 30
th until July 21st. All work needs to be
completed by then.
There are four elements we need to juggle in order for this to be a
successful experience for everyone...
1. The
class syllabus... here are all
the assignments and links to readings that you will need to work through the
problems for each week of the class. The syllabus is found with this
address: jnevins.com/digitalphotographysyllabusonline.htm or click
here.While you are at it, browse around the rest of my site to get to know
me better. I have posted a portfolio of my photography, links for finding
galleries and museums online, my teaching philosophy and more.
2. The Class Blog. Here.This is where we will build a sense of community. It is
important to post examples of your work each week as well as comments about
your images to accompany the images posted as well as comment on the work of
others in the class... you can ask questions to me personally anytime via
email, but here is a public place to offer suggestions, ask questions and just
generally where we can create a class environment. Blogger is very easy
to post to... the best way to post your images and comments is using Picasa3:
The URL is
http://mod52012digitalphotography.blogspot.com/
Your grade is based on your posts to the blog and more
importantly your portfolio of photographs, illustrating your understanding and
completion of the assignment for each week.
I have added you to the class blog … you need to
respond to the link that Blogger.com sent you in order to become a member of
the class blog. Once you are a member, you can post there. I'd prefer to
stay in contact with you via regular email. Please email me at
jnevins@albertus.edu or jnevins@jnevins.com. You may call me at
home anytime (up until 9 pm) if you would like to talk
personally or to help solve a technical issue that would be harder via email.
It is very important to get all technical issues solved and out of the way at
the outset, in the first week.
3. Picasa3 software that is
free from Google and found
here This is a
fairly comprehensive image editing and organizing program. It makes
finding,
opening, editing, posting to the blog, printing, emailing, etc.... your
photographs extremely easy and there isn't the steep learning curve associated
with Adobe Photoshop CS6. Photoshop is expensive , ($220 or so for the student
price) and hard to learn at first. If you have Photoshop and enjoy using
it then by all means continue to use it. You will do just fine staying
with Picasa3 though.
4. Image hosting for your whole portfolio. My online art
classes host their portfolio images at
Fotothing.com from the
UK. It makes posting your assignments a snap and we have the ability to
form a group or virtual community as "friends", similar to
myspace. Join up there then send me your screen name so I can add you as
a “friend” ... my screen name is jnevins. Check out the portfolios of
previous Mod students. They are “my friends” to the right of my page.
Fotothing.com/jnevins If
you can't figure out how a shot was done, post your question to the blog or
email me and I may use it as a post on the blog to the rest of the class. In order for me to add you as a "friend". you need to post a picture to fotothing... any picture will do.
This first week, we must iron out all of the technical issues to be sure that
everyone is up to speed. I have asked for you to post a creative self
portrait and to tell us something about yourself. This is an art course
and its primary focus will be on your portfolio as the basis for your
assessment. Study the syllabus to get a sense of what I will be looking
for. Links I have posted to visual images and readings are an important
component of the class... I'll be looking at how you are in dialog with the
images and ideas linked in the syllabus as a component of your grade.
Also important is that I get a sense of your spending time at the
assignments and are growing in the medium of photography as the course unfolds.
Posting your best one or two images you are creating to the class blog
about twice a week is vital to your success in this class. Use the
comment button to respond to your classmates posts. One of the strong
points of using Fotothing is the ability to post comments there as well. The
bulk of your work will be posted to fotothing. I am expecting 7 images
per week as the bare minimum… (6 that really fulfill the intent of the
assignment and more like 10 would be a better number… this is digital!)
Any comments, suggestions, or observations as to how I can smooth the way for
you as we get going will be welcome. My goal is your success and your
feeling that this was well worth your time.
Looking forward to launching this new class!
Best wishes,
Jerry
