Paper Laptop

Due to reasons beyond my control, I won't be anywhere near the internet for most of this Thursday.  In fact, I won't even be in the same state.

Naturally, the first thing I thought of was the first grade kids I had been planning to teach!

Now, most of them are able to log in on their own, but most is not the same thing as all. I could have them do an online lesson, but instead I pulled out a project I had my students do a few years ago back when I didn't have a computer lab to call my own.

With some construction paper, a little glue, and some markers/crayons/colored pencils, we'll be making our own laptops.  The point of the lesson will be to talk about how computers are used to communicate with others online.  The end result will be a neat toy laptop to call their own.

You can do the lesson too, if you want.  The printable keyboard template (2/page) is below.

Academic Aesthetic 177: 404 VOICE NOT FOUND

Download .mp3

This episode of Academic Aesthetic is brought to you by antibiotics and  cough drops.  You see, early last week a combination of lots of talking (occupational hazard of teaching), and post nasal drip caused by a sinus infection made me lose my voice.  It's better now, but can only talk so long before my agonized squeaks become a source of amusement for all around me.

So submitted for your approval is an interview of me done by Dr. Kavita Mittapalli, someone whose name I most likely just mispronounced horribly so I won't try to say it again.

The good Doctor visited one of my 1st grade classes last week, before the whole AWOL voice incident, and recorded a conversation with me afterwards.  I rambled on, and then made the bad decision of requesting a copy of the interview.

And I still haven't learned, as I'm now making another bad decision and playing it for you.  Enjoy.

Academic Aesthetic 172: Minecraft Lesson Video

Download .mp4

This is  a brief overview of Minecraft Classic (minecraft.net), how I related it to my curriculum, and some student examples.

Apologies for the size of the download (Nearly 50 MB, ouch!), but I unfortunately couldn't make it smaller without losing a lot of the quality.  Video is like that.

Academic Aesthetic 169

Moving right along.  In today's 'cast, I ramble on about:

• My county's Sharing Technology with Educators Program, or S.T.E.P.


• My new favorite Android App (still), AndRecorder, which I keep calling "AndRecord" because long names are abbreviated below my little phone icons.


• Gimp.org, because it's free and awesome.


• SumoPaint.com, because it as well is free and awesome.


• Frames, because while it is not free, it is still awesome.


• A rant against looking for things because they "work in the classroom."  That's great if we're preparing our students for spending the rest of their lives in our classrooms, but there's that "real world" thing going on outside.  Getting something to work in the classroom is good and necessary, but we should be finding and using things that will work outside of our classrooms as well as in them.

What I Teach

Want to know a secret?  A deep, dark secret that I've kept off this blog for over a year now?  One that will shock you?

Well, too bad.  I'm going to tell you anyway.

Ready?

Here I go ...

I'm not a part of my school's Art Department.

Yeah, that shocks me, too.  Here's a guy whose screen name on an umptillion of Web 2.0 sites is "The Art Guy," who may or may not have been the first art teacher podcaster (at the time I started I couldn't find another one ... that's far from the case now of course), who isn't even a part of his own school's Art Department.

How'd THAT happen?

It's a bureaucratic issue, to be honest.  I teach in a computer lab in a K-8 Arts Academy.  If it was a high school, I'd be a Computer Graphics teacher.  Unfortunately there is no course number for such a class in middle school, let alone elementary.

Instead, I teach a class called Technology Concepts.  It's a fun class to teach, if you're as geeky as I am, but it's not inherently an art course.  Therefore, I  have no reason (on paper, at least), to be a part of the Art Department.  Instead, I'm a part of the Enrichment Department.

It's not so bad...

I recently was chatting online with a former coworker from a previous school, and she lamented my change of departments.

"I'm so sorry," she said, "You're far too talented to not be teaching art!"

At that point I puffed out my chest and my head swelled with pride - and not just because she said I had talent.

"Oh, I'm still teaching art.  Do you honestly think I could stop teaching art if I tried?"

Of course she could not.

I'm an art teacher. I teach art.

Your definitions may vary, but in my book, ART is anything that involves creativity.  I don't care if it's a painting, story, play, song, dance, or video game.  An ARTIST is anyone who creates art, and an ART TEACHER is anyone who teaches students how to be artists.

I'm a teacher at a Creative & Performing Arts Academy.  Whatever subject is taught by any teacher, they had darned well better be teaching art as well or they don't belong there.

Math is art.

Science is art.

Social studies is art.

Reading/Language Arts is art to the point that the R/LA Department should be part of the Art Department as well!

Conclusion

Does it sting a bit to know I'm not part of a department named for my degree and certification?  Yes, yes it does.  But it doesn't change what I teach.

Art is universal.  Only the styles and media change.

And I'm an art teacher.

Climbing The Wall

The photo above is the front wall of my school.  On the day I stopped by to interview for my position (one of the best career choices I ever made, in my honest opinion), I saw this wall and thought "If I was a few decades younger, I'd try climbing that."

Indeed, with all of those bricks pushed away from the flat surface, this wall was full of hand holds and toe holds.  Perfect for climbing, except for the concrete and asphalt below you.

No, I never tried to climb that wall.  After a childhood accident where I fell off a porch railing and broke a wrist I decided not to climb things where I could severely hurt myself.  (I did later go cliff diving - repeatedly - but water landings aren't so bad.)

Flash forward to our school's end-of-the-year field day celebration.  A couple enterprising students looked at that wall and had the same thoughts I had - without the "Oh, we could probably really hurt ourselves" thoughts to go with them.

Fortunately these students were far from unsupervised, and stern words and looks managed to stop them before they got more than a couple feet off the ground.

So what does this have to do with education?

Everything.

My experience kept me from climbing that wall, and my experience kept those students from doing the same.  They hadn't yet learned that the benefit of climbing that wall ("Look how high I am!" "Look what I can do!") was overshadowed by the drawback of a potential injury.

Switch gears to a Kindergarten classroom, where the teacher has decided not to let her kids use oil pastels because the benefits of learning a new media do not (in his or her mind) outweigh the drawbacks of potential hard to clean messes.

Switch again to a classroom where students are not allowed to create blogs because the perceived risks (Do I have to list them?) don't outweigh the perceived benefits.

I've seen many teachers, administrators, and parents that thought of climbing a brick wall with no safety gear in the same light as student blogging, cell phones in schools, oil pastels in Kindergarten, or even letting special needs students use scissors.

What's the difference?

The difference is that we as teachers would be fools to ignore taking proper precautions before a learning activity.

I've blogged about this before.

I argue that it's not the same thing if we keep safety in mind.  Let the Kindergarten students use oil pastels after setting out "placemats" (newspaper works fine) and reminding them that when a color is done it goes back in the box.  Let students blog in a moderated setting, perhaps even in a "walled garden" environment where only the students, school employees, and parents can see what's being said.

When a student wants to climb a wall, for goodness' sake give them a helmet, safety line, and something soft to land on.

Then cheer with them when they see how high they can go.

#MSET Session 2: Integration Technology & Art in a Lesson Study

Presented by Roxanne Dean & Linda Jones, both from Baltimore County.

• Honestly, could anyone who knows me expect me to attend any other session?  It's Art! It's Technology! This is what I do.


• Demonstrating Voicethread used to teach a lesson on drawing a human face.


• "At this point they haven't thrown me out." Said RE: How many Voicethread pages she has.


• 5th graders drew self portraits then turned them into contour line drawings and learned about Andy Worhol.


• "Why do you think we need to do this in contour?"


• They reproduced their drawings on the computer.  No scanning or photography?  Would be nice to have the time for that.  In my case I may have to use something like this to digitise student work.


• Showing Art Content Standards.  Yes, this is an art lesson!  It's not just token "Let's color something and say we did art!"


• Showing lots of Pop Art.  Comment about how things that Warhol thought were important are not recognised by today's kids.  Interesting snapshots of the culture at the time.


• So apparently Voicethread lets you record video with your voice.  That could be helpful for students who are ESOL or have certain disabilities.  Seeing someone's lips move as they talk can certainly help to aid comprehension in some cases.  (It helped me in college, especially with some professors who had strong accents.)


• A cow is used to signal clean-up time.  Students expect it and are used to the routine.  Makes me wonder how I might implement a similar strategy - perhaps with a school mascot?


• Students used the paint brush tool in Pixie to redraw their line drawings.


• Copy/paste used to get 4 identical panels, then the panels were colored separately with the paint bucket.  (Watch out for cracks!  The colors will leak through!)


• While this was done with Pixie, I see how this could be done with other art programs.  GIMP, SUMOPaint, TuxPaint, Frames, even!  ... Am I starting to sound like a broken record?


• "Zoho" used to embed art on a site for parents to see progress.


• Showing an example made starting with a photo.  Apparently the photo needs to be "glued" to keep it from fading.  I imagine layer settings could protect it in GIMP/Photoshop/SUMOPaint.


• "Photoshop is a little advanced for 5th grade."  Not if my 3rd graders are making vector graphics in Frames.  Give me a day or two and they can do it.


• A conference is not worthwhile if you don't find something you can take with you and use the next school day.  This presentation is all I need for MSET to be worth it, and it's only the 2nd session!  Can we say this is an awesome conference? Yes we can!

#MSET 2010 Session 1: 411: Easy Animation for Time-starved Classrooms on a Shoestring Budget

Presented by Diane Boarman, Howard County

This is possibly one of the smallest rooms I've ever been in, and there are few if any empty chairs.  Meanwhile the walls are doing little to block out the noise of convention center staff moving things around.  Nevertheless, the show must go on.

• Created her first animation using Layers in Photoshop, but her school didn't have Photoshop.


• Switched to placing images in PowerPoint.


• Suggests PlayDoh for claymation.  If the lesson takes a while the PlayDoh can dry out, even with sealing it regularly though.  Parafin based clays can be purchased at craft stores and never dry out.


• Make sure slides are imported in order - some programs have a fit and put slide 10 in front of slide 2 because 1 is more than 2, right?  Watch for that.


• Still suggesting Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.  On a shoestring budget I'll use GIMP.org or SUMOPaint.com.


• Images not in the rectangle for a PowerPoint slide will not show up.  GREAT way to organise elements that will be moving in or out of the frame later.


• "Insert -> Duplicate Slide, then move something." Repeat ad nausium, but it WORKS and students can understand it.


• What's also good about this is if students make the switch to Frames these skills should carry over.  Frames is more powerful than PowerPoint but PowerPoint will get the job done with most of the tools you need.


• PowerPoint 2008 no longer supports photo editing?  Ugh, didn't they learn when Apple cut features out of iMovie?  Hm, apparently they did but they learned the wrong lesson.


• Word Art to make titles for your animation - more flexibility than using the built in title generator in iMovie or MovieMaker.


• "Save As -> Select JPEG."  Check "Save All" and change the name to prevent overwriting.  A simple "ver1,ver2, ver3" is enough.


• "Save often."  Good advice for almost any lesson.


• When you import your slides in set the timing for as short as possible and turn Ken Burns Effect off!  Honestly, that effect is overused and makes your animation into an earthquake simulation.


• You don't need to use clip art - you can draw things with Autoshapes, also.


• Animations imported into PowerPoint will not be animated when exported as JPEG files.  Don't bother playing with transitions in PowerPoint.


• "Do we have enough time?" We have 20 minutes left.  She breezed through.


• The video she's showing is very amusing and a mix of live action and animation.


• Did she just call GIMP "Free shareware?"  She did.  It's not shareware.  It's just free.

Playing with Frames

I'm at a Clay Animation training session sponsored by my employer.  I've done stop motion animation before, but not with Frames.

I'm really liking Frames.  My previous animations have all been compiled in iMovie or (against my will) MovieMaker.  Those programs work, and are often pre-installed on computers, but Frames was designed specifically for stop-motion animation.  Most of the concerns I had going in were resolved in an "Oh, so it can do that" way, followed by an "Oh, you mean it can also do this?!" moment.

I'd write more about it, but I have to go back to playing ... er, I mean learning how to use this software.

(Oh, and if you liked the music, Bre Pettis made it.)

Things to do at the new job:

1. Start Monday. (Woohoo!)


2. Use no textbooks.  Textbooks, especially ones about technology, seem like they're out of date before they're shipped.


3. Avoid handouts whenever possible.  Papers have an annoying habit of getting lost, "lost," or simply ignored.  Also, I've never seen a school copier go more than 4 weeks without having a spectacular meltdown.  Handouts have their uses, but I refuse to be one of the teachers staring at a copier exuding the magic blue smoke 5 minutes before class and wondering what I'll do now that my entire day's lesson plans are shot.


4. Avoid paper whenever possible.  When I first played with the form feature in Google Docs, my initial thought was "I could use this to build a test!"  I don't think I'll be using Google Docs for everything, but I will find ways for students to hand their work into me digitally.  I'm looking at a Drupal installation for this at the moment, though I might play with Moodle if Drupal doesn't fit the bill.


5. Use wikis.  They're easy to update, tamper resistant, and can replace textbooks and handouts in my classroom.  The best part is I expect my students to have a sense of ownership if they know that they helped make the class "textbook."


6. Tie art in with everything.  It's an art class.  It's a computer class.  It's both.  I intend to keep it that way.  The technology aspect is hard to avoid when teaching in a computer lab, but one can lose sight of the art when dealing with MS Word.


7. Avoid busywork.  As any former substitute will tell you, a class can sense fear.  They can also sense when you're wasting their time.  Every lesson I plan will have me asking "When will they need to know this?"  I'll ask, because my students will be asking as well.


8. Have students blog.  Maybe not every day.  Maybe not every class.  Maybe not in a way that allows the whole world to see everything they write, but every day people are using social networking platforms in ways that will hurt them in the long run.  One of my goals is to teach them how to do it responsibly.


9. Blog more.  This is a new position with a very open curriculum.  There are frameworks in place, of course, but I have a lot of freedom and that means I'll be trying a lot of new ideas.  I intend to share what does and doesn't work.

MICCA09 Sessions 3 & 4

As I was presenting these myself, I wasn't actually taking the time to give a play-by-play in Plurk.  You can see my wikis for Session 3 and Session 4 if you want my take on them, though.

Another option would be to check out Selena Ward's Plurk log of my Session 3 and someone else's Session 4 (She didn't attend mine because she's already a PLN master).  Good stuff, there.

Help me at MICCA!

For the 4th year in a row, I will be presenting at MICCA.

For the 1st time (for this conference, at least...), I will be presenting twice.

And as usual, I'm opening my handouts up to everyone who wants to add in their two cents.  I feel they're ready to go as-is, but that doesn't mean I'm the only person who knows what he's talking about!  (I'm hoping for supplementary information, not for someone to do the work for me.)

My presentations are as follows.  Click the links to see, edit, and/or add to my wikis:

Art 2.0

...how art lessons in the computer lab can reinforce other subjects.

Paper, pencils, and paints are good, but there are also plenty of free art projects that reinforce other subjects and can be taught using just computers. This session will showcase some tools, tips, and tricks that any teacher can use.

Personal Learning Networks

...how microblogs and more can make you a better teacher.

Personal learning networks (also called professional learning networks) are a quick, easy, and free way to continue your professional growth as an educator using web 2.0. This session will explain PLNs in more detail and show a variety of free sites that can be used to build your own.

What can I do with these? Review

The first WCIDWT was posted entirely on a whim.  The tech person at one of my schools gave me some interesting pieces of plastic, and the pack rat in me just couldn't say no.

Of course I had no idea what to do with them, so I snapped a quick picture with my BlackBerry and used Flickr to post the photo and my description/question to this blog.  The whole process took less than 5 minutes, but the responses were nice enough that I ended up using the same post as a warm-up for my Art Club.

Part 2 was a similar situation, except that the source was waste scrap paper that was just too small for most of the projects I've done with my students.  Again, 5 minutes of work yielded some awesome responses from both the followers of this blog and my Art Club.

So ... I think I'm going to keep this up.  As I find new, unusual, unorthodox, or just plain industrial waste materials, I'll post a picture and brief description and ask for your insights.

Creativity can be an awesome thing.  It can be even more awesome in a group setting.

Don't mind the shavings.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Garbage never looked so good."][/caption]

I handed colored pencils to my 1st graders today.

This was not too surprizing, as I did the same thing last week.  What I have noticed, however, is that most of my teachers with younger students don't let them sharpen their own pencils whenever they need to.

I, however, do.  I would much rather see a student raise their hand because they're having difficulty with a portion of their composition  than because their colored stick isn't pointy enough.  As a result I usually announce in the beginning of the lesson that if the pencil needs sharpening, they can just get up and sharpen it.  I even go so far as to explain when a pencil needs sharpening and how to sharpen it so that it doesn't disappear forever in a pile of shavings.  (Colored pencils are much softer than the 2B kind.)

You know what happens next...

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Stampeeeeeede!"][/caption]

That's right, any student who found a colored pencil that was not ready to vanquish a vampire was at the sharpener ready to go! This included those who had white colored pencils.  Did I mention this was a lesson where they used white paper?  Well it was.

This is the point when the classroom teacher looks at me with a patronizing expression that says "That's why I don't let them do that."

And I look at them with a nervous smile that says "Eheheheh ... I'll be right back."

The next minute or so is spent turning kinds away that don't really need to sharpen pencils, as well as enforcing the "Turn it 3 times then check" rule of sharpening.

And you know what?  That's it.

Occasionally a student will have a relapse, but for the most part they know my rules and what's expected of them.  They're fine with that because they're getting a cool reward in the process - an awesome art project.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the initial stampede was in fact because they wanted to revel in the idea that they could go and sharpen any pencil that needed it.

So how does this relate to technology integration?

You have to ask?

A new tool is a new tool, and new freedoms are promptly exercised.  There will be chaos, but if you stay alert it will at least be organized chaos and learning will still be accomplished.  Eventually, the chaos will be replaced with something better - a class full of students who are able to learn without raising their hands to ask permission for each step.

What's in a name?

I have over 2,000 students (not including teachers who are also, technically, my students) spread out over three schools.  This is a daunting task for many reasons, but only one of them irks be to the point that I'll mention it at the start of this blog post:

I can't remember that many names.

Oh, I'll make valiant attempt.  There's a handful of students whom I do know by name, but there's just no way I can learn who everyone is when I see them so rarely.

They do know mine though ... well, most of them.  To some of my students I'm "Mr. Smith."  To others, I'm "The Art Guy."  At the insistence of some teachers in one of my buildings some call me "Mr. Aaron," though I'm not too keen on that.

In any case, I've been thinking a lot lately about my "Art Guy" moniker.  Originally it was a name given to me by a student, and it sort of stuck.  It smacks of just enough irreverence to make it amusing to me even though some classroom teachers who don't know me try to correct their students when they hear it.

It's a great nickname to have when you're the only art teacher around, or failing that the only one that's a guy.  For that very reason when I started my first forays into edublogging and podcasting to find there were no other art teachers playing with the same technology that entertained me so much (at least none that I saw...), "theartguy" seemed like a perfect screen name for me.

And it has been.  I have found countless friends and joined more Web 2.0 sites than I can remember using that screen name.  It's how I'm identified by pretty much anyone on the internet who knows me.  My target audience has never been limited to just other art teachers - far from it in fact, because in the beginning it was such a rare occurrence to find one of us blogging.

But times change.  These days I'm far from being the only artsy person out there with a blog/podcast/vidcast/and so on., and I think that's totally awesome.  When I got started I brought an art teacher's perspective to these new technologies with which we were playing, because in some cases it was quite different from a [insert any other content area here] teacher's perspective.

Now, the art teachers that are blogging have their own little corner of the internet to form their Personal Learning Networks.  Networks where they don't have to start off by saying "As an art teacher...," because their target audience is other art teachers.  Again, this is awesome.

But it also means I'm not the only "art guy" out there.

If I walk into a room full of 30 students ready for an awesome painting lesson, I have no problem calling myself the Art Guy.  If I walk into a room with a decent percentage of other art teachers ... I hesitate.

There is more I want to say, but this post is long enough for now.  Expect another installment later.

Prove Me Wrong

WARNING:  I'm either on a high horse or a soapbox grandstanding with an overinflated ego right now.  I'm not always this smug or confrontational (I hope...), but some recent events have led up to this post.  Read at your own risk.

I do the impossible. Daily.

"He won't do any work. Just let him sit there."

"This class will never be controllable when it's snowing outside."

"These special ed. students don't have the hand-eye communication to use scissors."

Each of these statements is something I've been told by a classroom teacher. Each of these statements have been proven wrong.  See that photo?  It was taken by a 2nd grader, then submitted to a juried art show.  It got in.  Don't tell me photography can't be taught to 2nd graders.  I could add more examples, but do I need to?

It is a personality flaw quirk of mine to, when I hear something cannot be done in the classroom, see that as a challenge.  Sometimes it turns out the chalenge issuer was right, but more often than not I get to show them what a little effort and guidance can accomplish.  They had given up on those students because they did not think they had the time and/or the energy to accomplish the aforementioned tasks and teach the prescribed curriculum.  Understandable how they got to that point - I'd be there too if I was in their position - but that doesn't mean I'll let it stay that way.

So...

When a classroom teacher tells me they'd love to include more art in their lessons, but they just don't have the time / energy / creativity / inspiration to do that and cover the mandated curriculum....

Challenge issued.

Challenge accepted.

Just don't keep saying it can't be done after I prove you wrong.

What have we learned?

I'm spending most of this week organizing, labeling, and hanging pieces for the Youth Art Month Expo's juried art show.  It's a lot of work, a lot of fun, and I get to be in the same room as other art teachers.  Beware!

While sorting the untold piles of art I couldn't help but think of my own art classes.  Not the ones I teach, mind you - I'm talking about back when I was in high school.  Back then I was a bit of a geek.

Um, OK, so I still am.

But while now I'm an outgoing extrovert of a geek with an ego larger than the Hindenburg, back then I was an introvert with very little self confidence.  The only class where I felt I could really speak my mind was art, and that was because Mr. Lichner promoted the kind of environment where good ideas were rewarded and negative criticism had no place.  When one of us came up with an art project that had nothing to do with his idea for what projects he wanted us to do, he still encouraged us to explore the possibilities allowed to us by the media to which we had access.

If all of my classes had been like my art classes, I can assure you my parents would have been much happier with my report cards.

And so, since I was thinking about this, I posed a question to Plurk, Twitter, and a few other outlets.

What's something you've learned from an art teacher?

The results were rather interesting, I thought.

There is no such thing as a mistake, only opportunities to create more. - Laurie Korte

Do the opposite of what you normally do. Completely ended up changing my style and medium. - Judy Shintani

It's all in the details, take a second look, never be afraid of color. - Selena Ward

"There are no mistakes. Only happy accidents." Kindergarten art teacher. She was right. Mostly. - Bud Hunt

You can always throw it out and start over :-D - Jacqui Derby, Ph.D.

To properly observe something, sometimes you need to look closer. - Beka Smith

There is no such thing as staying in the lines.. Patti Duncan

[The] law of perspective. Patti Duncan

Part of me feels the need to comment on each of these individually, but I think it's better to let them stay as-is.  What I will say is that each person who responded took something useful and meaningful back with them when they left their art classes.

As the powers that be wring their hands and look at budgets that are stretched too thin to fit everything, it is my hope that they too will remember what they learned in their own art classes.

So what have you learned?

What do I do with these?

What do I do with these?,
originally uploaded by TheArtGuy.

I have 4 of them. They're hard plastic, @5" across, and fit together. They are packing material for a printer paper that's expensive enough to make me doubt I'll get any more of them.

But they look cool. Any project ideas?
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Susan Benarcik's Paper Spore

It's no secret that I love, love, LOVE paper sculpture.  Whether it's one sheet or 2,000, printed out or made from scratch, to me there's something aesthetically appealing about taking a planar surface and turning it into a three dimensional object.

So when this showed up in my RSS reader thanks to MAKE Magazine .... well, I had to blog about it.

This sculpture looks awesome.  On top of that, it also looks simple enough to have my younger students recreate something in the same style!  I've been looking for ways to incorporate more contemporary artists into my lessons, and this might just be one of the ways to do it.  I like her Artist's Statement, too - I'm thinking that paragraph alone could inspire all kinds of cool projects.

The only problems I can really think of right now would involve display, as I would need to make sure the student work was structurally sound enough to hang from the wall and not fall apart.

Still, with 20+ students working on the sculpture we'd be able to make something pretty neat looking no matter how long it lasts.

I

Every now and then a program comes along that is so fantastic, so perfect for what I do in the classroom, that I can't help but use it.  Skitch is one of those programs.

I first found out about it when Bre Pettis started posting drawings he'd made using the program.  Intrigued, I downloaded it, played with it, fell in love, and used it in one of my classes the same day.  Not only was it that easy to use, it was appropriate, too.

Skitch has a variety of options out of the box.  I can start with a blank image, take a screen capture of any size or portion of my screen, drag in a preexisting image, import something from my iPhoto library, or even use my laptop's built-in iSight camera to snap a picture of myself.  That image, whatever it's source, becomes the background layer.

[caption id="attachment_668" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="(The quick math on the side shows the years between the event and the painting.)"][/caption]

On top of that layer I can draw, write, annotate, highlight, whatever, using a small selection of tools.  Since all of this is on a layer on top of the image I can erase or cover up without fear of destroying the original image.

When I'm done I can upload the image to Skitch's own servers where it'll give me a Flickr-esque code I can use to insert it into webpages.  Got a .Mac MobileMe account?  It can upload them to there instead if you want.  You can even drag the picture to your desktop if you decide you want to upload it through a different service, or simply not upload it at all.

As much as I'm loving Skitch, it's not all things to all people.  As of now I can't have it record video through my webcam - still photos only.  For quick video on the Mac Photo Booth and iMovie are still the way to go.

Have an older Mac or (oh no!) a computer running Windows?  You're out of luck - Skitch will only run on Mac OS 10.4.6 or later.

The drawing tools are also very limited.  Adequate for underlining, circling, and so on, but GIMP and SUMO Paint are much more advanced with a wide variety of features.

Text can be added quickly and easily, but there's a limit to how large or small I can make it and I still haven't figured out if I have any control over the font.

With all these negatives, why do I bother to use Skitch?  Because it's the best at what it does - selecting an image and building upon it quickly with minimal effort.  All the times I used GIMP in the classroom no teacher ever asked me where I got such a full featured application.  Sure, I COULD do the same stuff with GIMP or Photoshop, but that would be like using a car to visit your next door neighbor.  In most cases walking (& using Skitch) is simpler and faster.

Most teachers ask me about Skitch when they see me use it, because the interface is non-threatening and they see immediately how it can be used to reinforce their teaching styles.

It's a shame they all have Windows based laptops.