DV for Teachers

I am sick of the false economy of punishing schools and schoolchildren because politicians don’t have the guts to ask people to pay what things actually cost. Year after year, school budgets get hammered and kids suffer, and then teachers and school systems get the blame.

Teacher Layoffs Cause Concern Over Turmoil in Schools – NYTimes.com.

But school superintendents say the consequences of sweeping layoffs are often overlooked in the policy debate. Layoffs, they say, hurt school cohesion, undermine student achievement and rupture ties with parents.“I’m getting nauseous just remembering,” said Barbara Byrd-Bennett, who as the Cleveland superintendent in the last decade had to make draconian teacher cuts. “The result was devastating for our classrooms.”

I was asked some months ago to do a Photoshop workshop for rhetoric students assigned to make a “Visual Argument.” The idea was to produce a composite image that made an argument, but ideally without text. The assumption was that the students would know little or nothing about Photoshop. Taking bits from different images with the Clone Stamp Tool and layering them would introduce not only that tool but working with Brushes, including the Eraser tool, Layers, some blending modes, as well as learning to navigate the notorious Photoshop interface(s). Digging through an older folder to clean out some cruft I came across this demo file, and realized it’s too good not to share.

How cool is this – add storage space for media to your iPad!

I have discovered, after reading a hard-to-find hint elsewhere on the web, that photos and videos can be stored on an SD card, and imported with the SD card adapter in the Camera Connection Kit, as long as the filenames are in a recognised format. The original hint I found suggested that just naming the files correctly would work but I found that the files need to be in a specific folder to be recognised.

via Extra photo and video storage for iPad – Mac OS X Hints.

Thanks to Chris Meyer of Provideo Coalition for pointing to FCP Quick Tips – episode #183. You’ll learn a lot; but it’s not what it seems. Make sure to watch the whole thing.

This is among the most disruptive aspects of Mac OS X, especially for switchers: the Help window that stays on top of all the other windows, no matter what. I cannot understand why this is the default behavior. Good news, however, from Macworld:

Fortunately, it’s possible to switch the Help Viewer to what’s called Dev Mode, which makes its window behave like any other window in OS X—if you switch to another app, the Help Viewer will recede into the background.

Hooray for Mac OS X Hints, or more precisely, its reader vczilla, for figuring out how to change this to sensible behavior. I saw it there, and Macworld reposted it to reach a wider audience.

Philip Hodgetts, long a Final Cut authority, asks if the rumors about a new 64 bit Final Cut Pro might be true and speculates on what that would mean. It’s only speculation, and the comments include lots of wishful thinking, but it’s informed speculation. After the unveiling of the new iMovie for iPad and the praise it’s had, there’s apparent reason for anticipation.