current project overview

Finished tutorial free to download

Introduction and motivation for choice of subject and relevance to personal research?

The motivation of my first idea for this project was going to be helping my father with in whiskey tasting lecture that he was making for the venue as I’m helping him with it anyway but there was no need to produce any art or anything significantly creative. I had a conversation with a friend of my mother who needs a way to teach Photoshop to her year 11 students. We had talked in the past about this so I thought this project/ assignment was a excellent opportunity to expand my Tutorial library which I use to teach others Photoshop in my spare time.

Originally the idea was a collaboration with just one teacher but after further conversation with other teachers it became a collaborator with two I.T. teachers and one art teacher that required a fun way to introduce Photoshop to their students.

Framing of ideas styles of presentation.

The idea of the project will be as a set of step by step Tutorials starting from very easy to somewhat harder made in Word but saved as a .PDF. If requested I have also purchased small USB to upload the .PDF files. The set of tutorials will primarily be available via my webpage as a page is dedicated to these tutorials.

A description of the stages of the development of the project.

Tutorial are not easy to write as the work I do in Photoshop is instinctual so I have to stop and break down each thing I do in order to explain the steps. The next hardship is working out what to make tutorials about as there are thousands of ways to use Photoshop from simple animations to complicated illustrations. Making artwork that showcases the micro skills learnt in each Tutorial is hard to produce so it take a long time to make each step by step Tutorial.

Examples of the work produced in Practical Assignment2A.

My project for nm3507 is to market a body of knowledge for industry. The intention is to create a number of tutorials showcasing skills in Photoshop that a teacher in a high school setting and others may use to expand or teach Photoshop to themselves or students depending on their requirements by putting the tutorials online as well as emailing copies to the teacher’s that help me with this research as requested. I may even include a USB with the step by step Tutorial.

Evaluation of the project based on external reviews.

So far the review of my tutorials have all stated that I need to make the outcome of the each tutorial clearer at the start of them and that I was missing simple step like clicking ok at times. I have discussed, with my collaborators, the importance of students seeing and knowing the end product they need to produce with each tutorial. I am aware that when I present my tutorials it is easier than if others are teaching themselves using them alone so my instructions for the self-directed learner or class of learners needed to be very clear and simple with the end result obvious to students from the beginning of each tutorial.

Future directions.

This project is a continuation on my personal interest in helping others learn and teach creative things. Even after this project is completed I will continue making more tutorials and adding them to my webpage as I continue to create them. I intend to also visit the schools that were contacted and volunteer to make at least a couple of presentations of Tutorials in Photoshop for students.

In 2012 I presented a couple of tutorial sessions for a group of teachers doing Professional Development in Photoshop at JCU.

Each time I produce Tutorials I move forward with the teaching of skills and understanding of ways to teach a skill as well as improving my own skills by the practice it gives me.