Classroom Journal

How To Make A Classroom Journal

If your class is studying particular areas of the world, a good exercise that will enhance their learning is to have your students write a five day journal. The journal will help them to imagine that they are actually visiting a country and will help them understand what it is like to live there. The entries should contain information that they have learned about the country so that the reader may learn a great deal about it simply by reading the journal entries. Students can use Adobe Fireworks, or a similar image editor, to illustrate their work. A useful approach is to find an image that characterises the country (no stereotypes please!) and then to superimpose images of themselves on the image. This will give the illusion that they were actually there.

The magic of photo manipulation!

Journal entries such as these, along with the images created, could be used on a bulletin board display entitled "Where in the World..." and then placed in the students' writing folders. Directions for this project can be found below.

Instructions For Creating A Classroom Photo Journal

The most important step is to find an image that represents a country. Once that is found, start Fireworks and create a new document with a transparent background (important). As we'll see, it doesn't matter what size the document is initially. Import an image of the student by pressing ctrl-r and select the image. You will need to dispose of the background so pick a photo that has a stark contrast between student and background. Crop the document to fit the photo by pressing ctrl-alt-f. Now select the magic wand tool by pressing W. Click on the background and if the contrast between background and subject is sufficiently high, the whole of the background will be selected. If not, you'll have to experiment with the tolerance settings for the magic wand tool. When the whole of the background is selected, press the delete key to get rid of it.

Now that we have an image of the student in isolation, import the image that characterises the country by pressing ctrl-r again. With that image still selected, send it to the bottom by pressing ctrl-shift-down arrow. Voila - you now have a student superimposed on their holiday destination. You can move the student around by pressing V to activate the pointer tool and then dragging the image.