I have always been fascinated with computer animation, so when I heard about using Graphic tablets in the classroom I became very excited. I know that the students love to watch movies by DreamWorks or Pixar, and I love the idea of bringing those into my classroom. Many of the students in the school where I teach have little or no access to technologies like this, so Graphic Tablets would be an awesome teaching tool.
When thinking about using Graphic Tablets, the lack of funding came to mind. My dream would be to have one Graphic Tablet and one copy of Adobe Photoshop installed on each computer in our computer lab, but I don’t see this ever being possible. I couldn’t even get one copy of Photoshop for myself to use without having to pay money out of my budget. I researched prices and found some moderately priced Graphic Tablets. The Genius MousePen 8 x 6-Inch Graphic Tablet is $37.49 on Amazon.com. I have some classes with 31students, so that would come to $1,162.19 plus shipping and tax. I get $2 per student in the school equaling roughly $1600 for the entire art budget per year, so this purchase would not be feasible. My dream would be to have the Wacom Intuos4 Professional Pen Tablet - Extra Large, a professional grade tablet. These cost $789 a piece, equaling $24,459 for a classroom set. Oh, how I wish I could afford that.
If I ever did get Graphic Tablets for my classroom, then I would use them for drawing, coloring, and ideally for computer animation. Students would be so excited to be able to create their own characters, and I believe that this might engage them more in story-telling and writing. I hope that someday these will be available to us all.
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The Graphic Tablet would be such a neat tool to have in an art class. I think this type of advancement would change art classes like nobody could imagine. Not only would students look forward to drawing by hand, but also with technology. It would open such a big door for your students. I understand your dream. Hopefully, one day it will be a reality! :)
ReplyDeleteThat would be so cool to have! I can see students really taking off and creating some amazing projects. It's too bad that cost limits us so often in the technology that we want. It would not offer you the scope of the Graphic Tablet, but if you have computer access I have a couple of students that like to create animations using doink.com. It's a free animation site. You can do crude, but fun animations fairly easy and very detailed ones if you are willing to put the time and effort in.
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