Squeak Squeak

When I was little, I really really loved art. I drew all the time. I could spend hours and hours on the computer playing with programs like Kid Pix and Fine Artist and some coloring book type program that I can't remember the name of anymore. I also really REALLY wanted to be a teacher back then (oh the irony). I lost interest in both of those things as a teenager.

Of course I ended up becoming a teacher. But the stuff I teach is bringing that whole other aspect of my childhood back in full force. This past summer, at my annual Nerd Convention (tech teacher conference), I learned about GIMP, an open-source version of Photoshop. I got really excited about it--I use Photoshop fairly regularly, and I'd been using another free program, Paint.NET in my class for about a year. GIMP was SOOOO much better than Paint.NET and I immediately started thinking of ideas for activities I could have my students do. The presenter mentioned a couple of other free programs and I jotted them down in case I had time to check them out later. One of them was Inkscape, and I finally had time--lots of it--to check it out today.

So, quick aside...I took a sick day today. Earliest in the school year I've ever had to take one. Also the third time within a year that I've lost my voice (thus the cryptic title of this post). By 4th period yesterday, I had an inkling I might need to stay home today, and I started writing a sub plan. By the end of the day, my voice was almost completely gone. I kept forgetting and trying to sing along with my music on the way home from work--not pretty. Since I've spent a good 12 hours not really using my voice, I've progressed to at least being able to hold a tune (between bouts of coughing). Ugh.

Therefore, I had lots of unexpected time to myself today. I read that book--The Happiness Project --and one of the things the author tried was "mastering a new technology." I picked Inkscape. While I am not a master of Inkscape (yet!), I did spend a whopping four hours playing with it and writing three introductory tutorials for my class website. I feel extremely accomplished.

Here's the plan: in a few weeks, we're going to start my programming unit in Exploring Technology. I teach my students how to make (extremely simple) computer games using Game Maker. I have a bunch of (extremely ugly and boring) graphics that I downloaded from the Game Maker website years ago, when I barely knew how to use the program. This year, I think it would be really fun if the kids could design their OWN graphics for the game--then their games really will be unique. Inkscape turned out to be a lot like Adobe Illustrator--a vector graphics program with some pretty cool features. I can't spend much (or any, technically) time with it, since I killed the first 5 weeks of school on GIMP and graphic design, and there are other aspects of technology that I need to cover, but I figure the kids who pick up programming quickly and have time to spare can look at the tutorials I wrote and figure it out for themselves. It's like supplemental material. The coolest supplemental material EVER! :)

I did more than just Inkscape today. I also got 100% caught up on grading, which feels great. Today might as well have been another day of work for me, except for the fact that I look like a schlump that just rolled out of bed and haven't had to yell at any kids . If it wasn't such a pain writing lesson plans for substitutes, I would totally take more advantage of my sick days. Oh well.