20091122 Sunday’s Artwork

Last week Saturday’s class I took on Sunday, as Saturday I had some work which took the whole day.  At midnight my mind prepared the lessons which I ought to take for this week. When I woke up Sunday is too young & my dreamy mind is in rest. I went to push home keeping a sphere cage in my mind. I taught them to define custom pattern — To fill two layers of circle with that pattern — to spherize the circles with the filter: spherize. It looks like 3d sphere cage. Children kept extracted image of dog & cat which looks like they were caged in.

Women from the home sometimes are watching the computer classes and some women with their baby’s in hand. In PUSH( People United to Serve Hunger – Trust) there is a deprived deaf & dump woman who has a very cute baby. She was wondering to saw the kids enhancing her cute baby’s photo. She is also a good cook and helping there making foods for all the kids.

I’m teaching in the same standards and same syllabus which I used to taught to masses of students when I was a Lecturer in Cyryx Computer Training Institute. The experiences I got from there gave me 100% confident to take these classes. And I strongly believe that these kids can really become great designers. I hope these kids will get sponsors for their higher studies or jobs in Graphic Designing through this blog.  What I knew about Graphic Designing is very little as I’m self taught and that little things will be surely passed to the kids.

20091114 Digital Makeup for photos

So far the kids learned using the move, marquee and lasso tools. Yesterday’s class they made more using these tools with their photos. I taught them to apply feather to a selected area. They also learned to extract a selected area from an image. They worked with their own photos. They changed their eye color to green and their hair color to pink; darkened their eye brows and colored their lips. They adjusted the colors of the selected area by using the sliders in the hue saturation panel. They also merged different photos.

Yesterday they also had a competition. The team of youngsters visiting them every Saturday who will also take tuition to them arranged some games and they gave prizes to the kids. They were from an IT company based in Chennai and they will come most of the weekends to cheer the kids. They were also helping the pastor who is taking care of the home to get treatment and dialysis.

Yesterday one of the kids named Bhavani looked sad in the class with her eyes filled with tears.  She was speechless when I asked why she so sad. But her face became bright at the end of class.

Bhavani’s face turns bright looking her green eyes in the photo

Kids sharing their ideas looking the document where two images are merged

Work done by Yesoda with her photo

Bhavani looking Yesoda’s work

Kids enhancing a photo taken by them

Kids looking the photo of a cute baby from the home and discussing what they can do with that photo

With this image I taught them photo merging and coloring selected parts in a photo

A student with lasso tool selected an area of his photo and then copied to another document

He is working with the extracted image from his photo

20091107 Creative ideas of kids

Although it’s heavy rain and flood yesterday I managed to go Push Home in time. When I went there all the children were in the main hall. In all other week-ends some youngsters will come there to take tuition and to play with those children.  As it’s showering heavily yesterday none of them came there. So the children were bored and are watching the rain. The pastor who is taking care of them went to hospital for dialysis treatment and he returned the home later in evening. He is very sick and he lay in a bed in the main hall, I noticed most of the time he is vomiting and suffering terribly because of the disease.

Apparently all of them thinking that no computer classes for yesterday, they thought I may not able to come. However they are all happy when they found me there. The other kids who were not learning computers also came to me and asked to take photographs of them. They presented themselves in different styles and were happy seeing their various snapshots. I gave the camera to one of my student who is in second batch and started the first batch class.

Until yesterday’s class the kids didn’t used guidelines or grids. I explained to them the importance of using rulers, guidelines and grids in Photoshop. Moreover I also trained them to use the lasso tools. Enabling the grids visible and using the polygonal lasso tool they selected a triangular area.

Together with me they created simple but awesome designs. Getting their creative ideas I helped them to draw a kite and that is their exercise for yesterday’s class. I also taught them to use the filter: twirl. They all understood the lessons well but for practice I had to hurry them because I need to give time to all the students for using the computer.

Their mind is fresh & open. I want to pass my knowledge limitless; to make them feel confident, happy & pride. By simplifying the lessons which are complex, I want to make them learn easily. In future I’ll help them to write their own blog – to express themselves more freely about their life, dreams & their experiences in learning computers.

Using Polygonal lasso tool to select a triangular area with grids visible

Creative ideas of kids

kite

A kids work

Yesodha, using lasso tool drawing the kite

One student doing the exercise and others watching and giving their ideas

Finished work – A kite

20091031(Week 5): PUSH Home – Some photos taken by my students

20091031(Week 5): Progress of students during first month training

As on 31^st October this Saturday’s class is their fifth class. The first two classes I trained them Computer basics and from the third class they started learning Photoshop.

After the revision of previous class lessons, this Saturday I trained the children to use skew & warp, transformations of a rectangular filled layer. By flipping horizontally & duplicating that layer they learned to make a box. I gave some basic training for Mani and included him in the second batch.

Now, totally 10 kids were learning in three batches and all of them are in progress after the end of their first month training. In upcoming classes, I hope that I can educate the kids with more Photoshop stuffs.

Mani Learning Photoshop

Using Skew, Warp

A student saving his work

20091024 Bhavani and Prem Kumar created nice designs

I taught them only two Photoshop tools, but they used that ‘move’ & ‘marquee’ tools to make some fine designs. In the beginning of the class, I asked every student to do the exercises of previous class. They have good memory, to impress the lessons in their mind I taught it again with more examples and by using shortcut keys. In addition, I helped them to learn using shift & alt keys together with the mouse for efficient use of marquee tool. They created some comic creatures with their own imagination just by using marquee selection tool.

Bhavani from second batch created a nice design in her second Photoshop class and Prem Kumar from third batch done a wonderful cartoon. One kid named Mani watching this with interest asked me whether he can attend the class. He hadn’t attended any of the previous classes so it’s difficult for him to get along with other students so I said I’ll give him a special class or place him in the next batch of students. But he was disappointed because he was not able to work in that class. However, I don’t want him to be left out, so probably in the next class by giving him some special training I’ll include him in any one of the three batches.

Doing the exercises of previous class

Add and Subtract of Marquee Selection area

Bhavani, Yesodha and Debora Practicing the lessons

Made by Bhavani

Example given by me to the students

Example of selecting and filling an area

A student doing the exercise

Student Practicing the lesson

Made by Prem Kumar

Made by Prem Kumar

Photograph by a student

20091017: Children played with colors on Diwali!

17th October is Diwali which is a festival of lights. When I went to PUSH home some kids were celebrating with fire crackers offered to them by two young men who were playing with them. The kids, who were learning computer, came to the class with much eager.

They thought I’ll teach them to play a new computer game. But I gave an introduction to them about Graphic Designing and told them by learning it in detail they can become Professional Designers and so Knutpunkten.se had arranged this classes for them.

Although they were disappointed of not letting them play games I  observed that they got interested when I started to teach Photoshop. I explained about what are layers in Photoshop by providing examples of books kept one above one. They easily learned and they got excited when I give examples for using marquee tool. They played with colors. I conducted classes in 3 batches by providing 1.5 hrs for each batch.

Naveen an older boy from the home who is also helping me in conducting the classes joined the first batch for learning Photoshop. The students were very happy to know that my colleagues from Sweden office is inquiring them often.

Teaching them layers -- creation and duplication of layers, Selection using marquee tool, Filling the selected areas with colors, rotating and arranging objects in the stage
Students Practicing the lessons: In a new document they created a new layer -- Selected an rectangular area using marquee tool -- Filled it with color -- Duplicated that layer -- Rotated and arranged it on the document.
Creativity of kids: This design was created by one of the kids learning computers

20091010: One more batch started and now 9 kids were learning

	Click here for more photos…

A new batch with three students started on 10th Saturday and for those students I taught the basics of using a computer. For the other two batches I revised the lessons of previous class first and then new things. Naveen who is an older boy from that home is helping me to conduct the classes. I asked him to take care of the students’ to practice the lessons all the other days.

The students were not well in typing. So to make them learn typing in an easy and interesting way I had to find some typing tutor software or games that can help them improve their typing skills.

Moreover I want every student to be happy while learning and therefore I’m not pressuring them to learn fast. I spend more time on chatting with them, so that I can know their interests. All the students took photographs and they learned more on using the camera.

PUSH Home Computer Classes

I’m Alwin and I work in Knutpunkten.se. I’m also teaching the basics of computers, Photoshop and Photography every Saturday’s to PUSH home kids for two years from now. I started this blog section to share about my experience in training them and about the students. I’ll update weekly with the events happening over there so please visit here every week for updates.

20091003: The first class is full of fun

After 2 hours journey by bus I reached the bus stop near PUSH home. From the bus stop I was taken to push home by Naveen a teenage boy from PUSH home.

Last week (26th September 2009) when I visited the home with my colleagues in Knutpunkten.se I conducted an introductory class for them. During the class I observed that 3 boys among the kids had basic computer knowledge. So for today (3rd October 2009) I had planned to start Photoshop classes for them. But those boys were more interested in playing football game as one volunteer is coaching them foot ball.

Though the boys went to play football I started the first session for girls, they were 3 and studying 6th standard in Government school. They don’t have any computer knowledge. After giving the introduction I taught some basics of computer operations like switch on/off and logging in the computer. Then I taught them about navigate to view files and folder.

I also taught them to use keyboard/mouse and for good practice of doing that I taught them to play Canyon Glider which is a computer game. Within an hour they learned all these things and started playing the computer game by their own.

While one student playing Canyon Glider game by her own, the other one supported her by giving ideas and I took the third one to teach photography. While she learned photography I let her play the Canyon Glider game and I instructed the other girl to take photos. Like this all the three girls spend equal time learning photography and practicing the game.

The girls were cheerful to see their photos and photo’s taken by them when I copied the files to the computer and showed them. I gave them some notes also.
Finally the girls were little unhappy to leave the computer as I started to teach the boys. The boys who return after football played asked me to teach them Canyon Glider game and photography. So I did the same for them, the boys learned more on using the camera like zooming and they took some nice outdoor shots also.

In the next class I planned to start Photoshop for the boys and for girls I’m going to teach more on computer basics.