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Advanced Computers Curriculum
Digital Photography
Digital Photography – Students taking my Advanced Computers class get to check out Canon digital cameras for the year. They then use these cameras to photograph student activities. The students alter and enhance their photographs using iPhoto and Adobe Photoshop.
Canon A580 – Students read pp. 1–74, and 125 of the owner's manual for the Canon A580 digital camera, then test their knowledge of the camera with a quiz. What I want you to know about your camera. (Even though your camera has a "beach" shooting mode, you really shouldn't take your camera to the beach because digital cameras really, really don't like sand, water, and the salt mist from the ocean. If you want to shoot pictures at the beach, buy a disposable camera.)
Fuji FinePix S700 – For some assignments, students may use Mr. Friedman's more advanced camera. Owner's manual. How to use manual mode using the S700.
Absolute Beginner's Guide: Using Your PC with a Digital Camera (pp. 329–335). Using a camera with a Windows computer.
iPhoto Tutorial – Apple's iPhoto Tutorial teaches students the basics of getting their photos into the computer, and then how to do simple photo editing.
Absolute Beginner's Guide: Organizing and Editing Your Digital Photos (pp. 337–345). Working on a Windows computer.
Digital Quick Guide: Getting Started with Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0 – Students read about how to use Adobe Photoshop Elements to enhance their photos. Adobe Photoshop Exercises. Exercise sample photos.
Using iPhoto and Photoshop to fix pictures – Students use iPhoto to correct flaws in sample photos. Drag the sample photos into iPhoto.
Flickr – Photosharing services are a great way to share your photos with your family and friends. Try uploading a photo to Flickr. Instructions for using Flickr.
Digital Photography School – For a lot of great tips on shooting digital pictures, visit the Digital Photography School website. Sign up for their weekly e-mail of photography tips.
Special Topics
Digital Makeovers – Why are models in magazines so good looking? Were they born that way? Partly. But watch these Photoshop digital makeovers to see how models are made "picture perfect" for ads:
YouTube is blocked at school, but if you go to YouTube at home and search for "photoshop makeover" you can see larger, more detailed versions of the videos, where it's easier to see what's going on.
Composite Pictures – Students use Photoshop to alter photographs. www.worth1000.com is a good site to check out what professionals can do with training and the right software.
Stock Photos – macworld.com/2651 has a listing of sources where you can get free stock photos.
Digital Movies
Bathtime for Maddie – Apple's iMovie HD Tutorial teaches students how to use their digital cameras and iMovie HD to create movies. Bathtime for Maddie clips.
Absolute Beginner's Guide: Making Your Own Digital Movies (pp. 403–410). Making digital movies on Windows computers.
The Muir Experience – Students film each other describing what they like and dislike about Muir. Then they edit the clips into a movie.
Stock Footage Scavenger Hunt – If you're making a movie, don't forget you can download stock footage for free or very low cost from places such as www.freestockfootage.com and stockfootageforfree.com. Let's say you're making a short movie about someone coming to Los Angeles. You could take stock footage of an airplane landing and the outside of house, overlay it with some verbal commentary, and shoot the rest of your footage in someone's living room. This is much easier than trying to shoot all of the movie yourself, especially if want to give the impression your story is taking place in some faraway country. Some footage of the Eiffel Tower, a little stock "French-sounding" accordion music, and—presto!—your story can seem like it's taking place in France, but without your ever leaving your home.
iDVD Tutorial – Once students have created their own movies, they can use Apple's iDVD software to burn the movies onto DVDs.
Incredible Lifelike Animation – Breakthroughs in animation now allow computer-generated characters almost indistinguishable from live actors. Previous efforts at producing life-like actors had produced "actors" that were, frankly, creepy-looking (think "Polar Express"). How "Emily" was made.
Computer Music
GarageBand Tutorial – Apple's GarageBand tutorial.
Movie music. The music is an extremely important, but under-rated, part of most movies. To appreciate the importance of music in setting the mood of a scene, students watch a clip from the Movie "Jaws," first without the music and then with the sound turned on. Note how Steven Spielberg uses the movie to ramp up the excitement of the sequence. Also note that such movie music is NOT usually a long, coherent melody like a song–you certainly couldn't sing along to it. Rather, the music is a collection of "riffs," short individual bursts of music placed so as to emphasize what is happening on the movie screen. For example, you might hear a long section of quiet violins, suddenly interrupted with the blare of trumpets when someone dramatic happens on the screen. Students will use GarageBand to "score" a short example video.
Magic GarageBand – Don't know how to play music? Don't worry. Let GarageBand create songs for you!
Where Do I Get Sounds and Music for My Movies? – Try:
If the loops that come with GarageBand aren't enough for you, Apple sells "Jam Packs" with thousands more loops of all types.
Numerous other companies provide loops on the Internet, for free or for sale including:
Internet Research
Internet Search Resources – The Muir School Library has an index to many research sources on the Internet.The World of Animals – The World of Animals is a collaborative project by the students in my Advanced Computers class. Each student is assigned to write a report, with appropriate graphics, about a particular species. Later in the semester, these reports we be the basis for student Internet web pages. These web pages, grouped by class of animal, will be posted to the Internet and linked to this web page. Clicking on the photo each type of animal will bring up a list of the individual species.
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Creative Writing
How to Write Dialogue – Dialogue is common in written fiction, but schools seldom teach it. In this unit students learn how to write a short story using spoken dialogue.
Alternatives to the Word "Said" – Writers often overuse the word "said" to indicate spoken dialogue. Here are some alternatives.
Using Adverbs to Strengthen Dialogue – An adverb is a word that modifies a verb. In dialogue, adverbs say how a character is speaking. Is the character speaking loudly, or sadly, or boastfully. Adverbs add color to your dialogue.
Animal Story – Students write a fictional story about their assigned animal. This story will become part of their animal web page.
Future Autobiography – Students write about the coming twenty years of their lives.
Internet Website Design
Absolute Beginner's Guide: Creating Your Own Web Page (pp. 305–311). One simple way to set up a web page is using Google's Page Creator system.
How to Create Internet Websites – An overview of how to set up web sites. The following two documents give specific instructions on how to set a Mysite web site:
These two documents detail how to create a more advanced Dreamweaver web site:
Visual Quick Pro: Creating a Web Site in Dreamweaver CS3 – Teaching the more advanced features of Dreamweaver is more than can be explained in a simple paper. This book will explain, step by step, how to set up a travel web site with text, links, and pictures. Project files for this book (Caution! Huge (2 hour) download.) These project files can also be downloaded from www.waywest.net/dwvqj.
How to Use Transmit to Update Your Website – Dreamweaver has a problem. If you keep using the blue Up arrow to send page changes to your remote web host, after awhile Dreamweaver may start to get "confused" and refuse to send the page changes. The only cure for this is to stuff Dreamweaver down and restart it. If you're making a lot changes to your website, it's often easier to make all the changes, get out of Dreamweaver, and then use an FTP program to send all the new pages at one time. Transmit is a good Mac program for doing this.
40+ Greatest Web Interface Design Tutorials – Want to know how the pros design web pages? Look at some of these advanced techniques.
Free Icons – Lots of free icons for websites.
Kaboose – Clipart can enhance your website.
Computer Programming
Basic – Students use the Chipmunk Basic system to write their own computer programs.
How Computers Work
The Journey Inside – Students watch the Intel video series "The Journey Inside" to learn how computers operate. Intel's Journey Inside website website guides students through the fundamentals of computer design.
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Binary Numbers
Binary Numbers – Binary numbers are basis for almost all computers. In the binary number system there are only two digits: zero and one. Everything else is represented as combinations of zeros and ones. Dot Plot worksheet.
How Data is Stored – In a binary computer, all data is stored as binary numbers. The ASCII code is a way for computers to use the letters of the alphabet, punctuation, and special symbols.
Computer Graphics Data – Computers store also store pictures as binary numbers. Every color is represented by a number on the computer's "color palette." The most computer type of computer image files are JPEGSs and GIFs.
Computers and Sound – Sounds are represented in computers as files of binary data. WAV files are one common way of storing sounds in a computer. Another way to represent sounds in a computer is with MIDI files.
Digital Electronics
Electronics lab – Students use an integrated circuit "breadboard" and integrated circuit chips to set up simple digital circuits.
Robotics
click on picture to watch MIT's Nexi robot in action
Descriptions of robotics videos shown in class
Military Computers and Robots
Air Force Videos
Cyberwar – What is the chance that a foreign country could attack the United States over the Internet? What damage could another country do, just using computers? Students read the Los Angeles Times article, "Chinese Hacking Worries Pentagon" and discuss the danger. A Changing War – Air Force video on cyberwar. Chinese Hackers Take On the World with Ease.
Killer Robots? – The Terminator movies and television series portray a world in which machines grow so intelligent that they eventually attack mankind. Is this just science fiction or could such a thing actually happen? Students watch NOVA videos on the subject of intelligent computers and discuss the probabilities.
Unmanned car in DARPA Urban Challenge race
Foster-Miller MAARS (Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System)
Northrop-Grumman Fire Scout robotic helicopter
Other Topics
Into the Future –Archaeologists can read the hieroglyphics in 5,000-year-old Egyptian tombs. Fifty centuries from now will future scholars be able to read Microsoft Office 98 documents written on floppy disks? We are in danger of losing our past as data we gather now, within a few years, becomes unreadable. Machines become obsolete. Data formats are forgotten. What can do to see that the records of today can still read decades, centuries, and millennia from now? Students watch a video on the topic. 
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If you have questions, comments, or additions to this web site, contact Paul Friedman, Computer Teacher (paulfriedman7@yahoo.com).
