With my final project in mind, I knew I did not want to make anything that would create a link to an external website or anything that would be complicated to use. Instead, I opted to create a larger image of various smaller images of creatures/things/people that are important to me: my children, my dog, my partner, my parents, and my schooling. I did this with the intention of making it simpler for those that wanted to stick to visiting my blog and seeing the image pasted with my text.
I set off to create this collage on an app initially, however I had to reassess my chosen platform a few times as it was not listed in the resources section of the assignment. This led me to download Photoshop, a program I always wanted to use but never had the chance to. The initial downloading part was not very complicated, but it was long and tedious. Once I was able to play around on the program, I found myself lost and frustrated. Most editing icons that were meant to edit images were not working for me. I started stacking pictures in the main image square, but they were not moving correctly. Then, to my dismay, in the middle of moving pictures my laptop crashed :’(
After spending an hour downloading, playing and, giving up on Photoshop, I returned to the resource page on Blackboard. Finally, I gave up on “challenging myself” and went toward the collage maker BeFunky. Like the first app, I was very familiar with the interface of the website and thus made it easy to navigate. I simply picked an already made template and dropped the images in the main image square. It was a HUGE contrast to the difficulties I faced with Photoshop.
The editing portion was also very simple to follow: Once an image has been selected, a square appears and asks a few options for the image. You can “delete the image,” “delete the cell” (this option deletes the image square, which changes the template automatically), or “edit the image.” If you should select “edit image,” then a few other options appear. However, in my specific experience, I did not use these options as my images didn’t need much editing. The only portion of the website I did interact with was the boarder colors, which again was very simple.
If I had more time with this project, I would most likely not use BeFunky. Collage makers are dated, and if I wanted to make a collage, I would have liked one that allowed me to use my pictures in their entirety (One of the reasons why I love that Instagram allows multiple upload). Also, one that doesn’t stick to a strict template as I wanted to add so much more. This is one of the reasons I really wanted to use Photoshop, but amongst other reasons, my laptop couldn’t handle the program.
Your collage turned out beautifully, Amberlynn! I understand being frustrated by the limits of the machine you're working on.
ReplyDeleteWhile it's fantastic that CPP has Adobe CC licenses for all students to use, your experience demonstrates that they're not really for *all students* when so many working computers can't run an application like Photoshop. And while an application like BeFunky easily runs on a wider array of machines, it doesn't allow the range of creative actions that you wanted to undertake.
Your experience demonstrates some of the important dimensions of access that can easily get lost in conversations about digital technologies. But these are the very considerations that should be centered when we're making choices about digital technologies, whether they're for teaching, public-facing government or civic projects, or for personal social use. And as students, users, and stakeholders, we should make sure that these realities aren't ignored.