first prints

We slid and slushed our way to school today as it finally opened after being closed for two days. The UCA campus is still closed because the carpark is too dangerous to use. I wasn't sure whether school would want us in Y6 today as the ICT refurb was probably behind schedule, the kids were probably behind with their work and Luke was stuck in Dover and/or ill - couldn't quite work that out, but he sounded awful when I spoke to him. First thing this morning Mrs M and Mrs A were really helpful and showed the best (only!) colour printer that currently works in the school and even did a test print for me. I had to rush off to my pilates class before it came out but at least it proved that a print was possible. I decided to go ahead and help a few children edit and print there work.

This afternoon I took the first group of four to the slow ICT suite and found all the computers were on and somewhat faster than previous weeks. The children found their photo folders and I explained the importance of organising their images by deleting the really bad photos, for example those that are out of focus -  a fault not always recognisable when editing on the LCD screen of the camera. Then I asked them to rename the good images so they could recognise them as something more meaningful than their DSC..... number tag that the camera generates. Each child then made a slideshow to assess the very best/most important image that they wanted to print. I am not sure I agreed with all the choices, but we discussed this and I made sure that there was a rationale decision making process taking place and encouraged them to re-evaluate their work where really necessary. However I think it is very important that the final decision was their own.

In all we made eight prints. I used my Epsom Heavyweight Matt paper and would like to experiment with other finishes for the final presentation. I was able to find a setting in the print dialogue box that gave me a fairly good result at medium speed. Photo quality prints do take a long time to print and saving time was somewhat important today. The detail in some of the close up prints is very satisfactory.  In the main, the children were very excited by the results - and so am I. Mrs A and Mrs M, who seem to be most interested/in charge of projects that involve photography within the school, were also very surprised that the printer was capable of such results. They couldn't believe that the photos had been shot on the 'rather basic' school cameras. They are 7.2 megapixel cameras so not too bad at all. I realised over the last two shooting weeks that the school cameras were often set to the 2M setting and explained the importance of using a higher setting for photos that are to be printed. I think they are going to attend my Powerpoint presentation to Y5 and try to get to grips with my megapixel maths.

Already I can see how the project is widening out to generate more possibilities than first envisaged in terms of Widening Participation. How about UCA hosting some Inset days for teachers in local schools to get up to speed with their digital imaging skills? This must be such a very important underpinning skill to enhance many parts of delivery of the school curriculum. For example, they want to put photographs of the children and/or their work onto the school website and don't know how. They also don't seem to know how to make best use of the photographic equipment on the premises. There must be scope for a day of development around this and other issues that I will discover during the course of this project.