ArtisanCam exploring

I chose to explore the ArtisanCam for my new technology in the classroom. This site is actually a picture book maker in which you can make your own children’s books. It is set up exactly like a book and you can turn the pages to draw and write text on each page. I was a little turned off in the beginning because I thought you could only put images on each page, but it actually allows you to grab the pencil and when you grab it makes a text box in which you can write text under or below your artwork to make it a written story if you like. It is very organized and the tools are easy to use and understand. You can flip from page to page and go back and forth between pages to edit things if you like.  When making your artwork, you choose a background, different items to put in the picture and different animals. You can scale the size of the objects to fit everything you want on the page as well as change the way the animal you place in the picture is standing. You can put “action” in the animal’s movement. I was at first turned off to the lack of things and pictures to choose from, but because there are so many different ways you can move, adjust and extra items you can place in the pictures my feelings changed drastically. I  think this is a wonderful technology to use in the classroom and would be very useful in my future classroom. 

I think this took could be used for any age group (kindergarten, first grade). For the younger ages I believe this could be used, possibly without having the students write any text, but making a story through the pictures they put on the pages. For the older age groups (3^rd, 4^th, 5^th) I think this would as well be appropriate because the students could go into more detail with their pictures and write the story as well using the text boxes. A drawback of this technology is like I said the finite number of images to be used to create the artwork of the story but I believe the students could still think of creative ways to make a story involving the available images. This would be great for creative writing and including artwork as well to create an exciting and fun story.  I think this could be used for all ages and all students would have fun exploring this technology because it is easy and fun and can be used in many different ways.