Hello Everyone,
Welcome to the Digital Photography online class. Digital Photography is a natural to offer as an online class because of the ease in creating and posting your work electronically. I find Campus Cruiser to be cumbersome in general and have decided to publish the course syllabus on my own website, jnevins.com, and run the entire experience using the web, a blog, and a public hosting site. Campus cruiser currently does not have the capacity to hold the number of images you’ll be posting as part of this class.
Class runs from March 23rd until May 14th. All work needs to be completed by then.
There are four elements we need to juggle in order for this to be a successful experience for everyone...
1. The class syllabus... here are all the assignments and links to readings that you will need to work through the problems for each week of the class. The syllabus is found with this address: jnevins.com/digitalphotographysyllabusonline.htm or click here. While you are at it, browse around the rest of my site to get to know me better. I have posted a portfolio of my photography, links for finding galleries and museums online, my teaching philosophy and more.
2. The Class Blog. Here. This is where we will build a sense of community. It is important to post examples of your work each week as well as comments about your images to accompany the images posted as well as comment on the work of others in the class... you can ask questions to me personally anytime via email, but here is a public place to offer suggestions, ask questions and just generally where we can create a class environment. Blogger is very easy to post to... the best way to post your images and comments is using Picasa2: The URL is http://mod2digitalphotography1.blogspot.com/
Your grade is based on your posts to the blog and more importantly your portfolio of photographs, illustrating your understanding and completion of the assignment for each week.
I have added you to the class blog using your Campus Cruiser account… you need to respond to the the link that Blogger.com sent you in order to become a member of the class blog. Once you are a member, you can post there. I'd prefer to stay in contact with you via regular email rather than Campus Cruiser email. If you email me using Campus Cruiser (jnevins@cc.albertus.edu) the auto response will reply right away asking you to please email me at jnevins@albertus.edu or jnevins@jnevins.com. You may call me at home anytime (up until 9 pm) at 203-664-1014 if you would like to talk personally or to help solve a technical issue that would be harder via email. It is very important to get all technical issues solved and out of the way at the outset, in the first week.3. Picasa3 software that is free from Google and found here This is a fairly comprehensive image editing and organizing program. It makes finding, opening, editing, posting to the blog, printing, emailing, etc.... your photographs extremely easy and there isn't the steep learning curve associated with Adobe Photoshop CS2. Photoshop is expensive , ($280 or so for the student price) and hard to learn at first. If you have Photoshop and enjoy using it then by all means continue to use it. You will do just fine staying with Picasa2 though.
4. Image hosting for your whole portfolio. My online art classes host their portfolio images at Fotothing.com from the UK. It makes posting your assignments a snap and we have the ability to form a group or virtual community as "friends", similar to myspace. Join up there then send me your screen name so I can add you as a “friend” ... my screen name is jnevins. Check out the portfolios of previous Mod students. They are “my friends” to the right of my page. Fotothing.com/jnevins If you can't figure out how a shot was done, post your question to the blog or email me and I may use it as a post on the blog to the rest of the class.
This first week, we must iron out all of the technical issues to be sure that everyone is up to speed. I have asked for you to post a self portrait and to tell us something about yourself. This is an art course and its primary focus will be on your portfolio as the basis for your assessment. Read through the syllabus to get a sense of what I will be looking for. Links I have posted to visual images and readings are an important component of the class... I'll be looking at how you are in dialog with the images and ideas linked in the syllabus as a component of your grade. Also important is that I get a sense of your spending time at the assignments and are growing in the medium of photography as the course unfolds. Posting your best one or two images you are creating to the class blog about twice a week is vital to your success in this class. Use the comment button to respond to your classmates posts. One of the strong points of using Fotothing is the ability to post comments there as well. The bulk of your work will be posted to fotothing. I am expecting 7 images per week as the bare minimum… (6 that really fulfill the intent of the assignment and more like 10 would be a better number… this is digital!)
Any comments, suggestions, or observations as to how I can smooth the way for you as we get going will be welcome. My goal is your success and your feeling that this was well worth your time.
Looking forward to launching this new class!
Best wishes,
Jerry
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