Texas - New Jersey Exchange

As a part of after-school programming, a core group of students from Raul Yzaguirre School For Success [Houston, Texas] and Eisenhower Middle School [Wyckoff, New Jersey] will go out as a team with teacher to document the environs on three or four separate occasions to be able to have an adequate amount of images for editing and exchange between the two student core groups at the two schools.

An online blogging website will be set up so the students from each school can upload their images for exchange ... then download for manipulation in Photoshop.

Each core group will take the downloaded images and make DIGITAL ART ... a manipulated version of the original photograph, in other words, the students at Raul Yzaguirre School For Success will change the pictures by the students at Eisenhower Middle School and vice versa.

These manipulated images ... DIGITAL ART ... will then be uploaded to the blogging website for comparison with the original photographs and for written comments by the students and teachers. And the original and manipulated images will be printed for a physical exhibition at both schools.

This process will involve a 16-week period. The number of students per core group will average 15 -20.

The Digital Art website:

www.eastcoastgulfcoast.blogspot.com/

This past school year, a photo blog project was done ... still ongoing/online ... between these same two schools and sponsored by FotoFest International's Literacy Through Photography program:

www.houstonwyckoff.blogspot.com/

and the blog was projected at the FotoFest Fence 2000 physical exhibition downtown Houston, May 11 - 22, 2008.

To enhance the possibility of funding the exchange process, please peruse my teaching activities and student accomplishments at Zhaoqing University in China:

www.tomrchambers.com/zqu.html

I taught art/technology there for two years and prior to my involvement with Raul Yzaguirre School For Success.

After this exchange with students at Eisenhower Middle School, I may try to set up another photo/Digital Art exchange project with a middle school in China since I lived and taught there for four years.

My website:

www.tomrchambers.com

Whatever strategy exists stems from the fact that an upgrade of the computer system is needed at Raul Yzaguirre School For Success so the students will be in the position to "do more" and "bigger and better" things, digitally, as they acquire technology skills, learn various subject matter within the interdisciplinary approach and move towards aesthetics via the digital art projects and have a better understanding of humanity as global citizens.

A long-term approach is needed for complete understanding of digital photography and how it applies to various categories of photographic documentation as well as very developed skills with photo software such as Photoshop to be able to transform the ordinary to extraordinary as well as be in concert with the Internet ... blog communications ... with a cross-cultural component of interacting with different student populations in America and possibly China.

The primary results will be skills development with hardware/software and as they relate to a vocation, increased literacy through imaging [digital photography] and writing about it, exposure to aesthetics and the creative process via photo manipulation to make digital art and increased awareness of other student populations, cultures, lifestyles via comments exchange online [blog].

broader gains will be a spill over into the community ... families/households ... and long term as the middle school students move through the secondary process. Creativity, productivity and exchange ... as the cornerstones of this project ... will manifest themselves on other tracks and possibly at higher levels in-house and for the Raul Yzaguirre School For Success [RYSS] ... other project offshoots directly related to RYSS that generates more student involvement, enthusiasm and control of their destinies.