Semester at Sea Ship and The Rule of Thirds

It has been a stressful week, so I’ve found myself thinking of happy memories of my study abroad on Semester at Sea.  Although the voyage involves traveling to many countries, one of my favorite destinations was the ship.  So, I went to the Semester at Sea website, at www.semesteratsea.org to see what pictures of the ship were on the site.  Interestingly enough, my favorite ones actually use the Rule of Thirds quite well.  Here is one that shows sunset from one of the decks of the ship.  I like how the post is in the left 1/3 of it, and how the deck is not just at a horizontal angle but is instead shown at a diagonal angle.  It almost makes me want to walk along the edge of the deck, watching the sunset as the ship moves.

Sunset from the ship

This picture was taken of the ship during calm seas.

The ship at sea

The ship is in the lower, horizontal 1/3 of the picture.  I do think that the image shows a bit too much sky, and would prefer for it to show more of the ship and less of the sky.  However, as it is, the photograph follows the Rule of Thirds quite well.

How Waitressing Has Made Me A Better Teacher

For ten years, I have waited tables.  It started off as a way to pay for college, and it ended up becoming a part of my life that has stayed.  For the past six years, I have worked at the Chili’s in Westfield/Carmel.  However, now that I am going to start teaching again, while taking classes, while working at two new buildings and basically being a new teacher again, it looks like I may need to hang up my apron strings.  I hate to do so, because I’ve come to realize that waiting tables has made me better teacher.  For example:
-It is very humbling to be the one in charge all day, giving orders, then to go into a restaurant and be given orders.  It keeps my life balanced.
-Especially the last two years, while in grad school and not teaching, since I can’t afford to travel to Mexico to practice my Spanish, all I need to do is go to the back of the restaurant at Chili’s to use Spanish.  All of the cooks and the dishwashers speak Spanish, and so do the bus boy and bus woman.   More than once they have asked me how to say various words, and more than once I have had conversations with these individuals in Spanish.  Not all customers speak English, and it is not uncommon for me to take orders all in Spanish.  One would hope that that means a greater tip, but that does not always happen.
-Speaking of tips, servers make $2.13 an hour.  At Chili’s we give 1% of our sales to the bartender, 1% to the person who puts food on our trays, and 1% to the busser.  So if someone has a $50 bill and leaves no tip, it costs me $1.50 to wait on the table.  A good tip is a compliment to me for my good service, and I like those compliments, but not giving a tip makes me feel horrible.  Therefore, when I go back to the classroom, I will make sure to give plenty of positive praise and try my best not to say negative comments to the students.
-A server definitely knows how to multitask, as I have to remember drinks, appetizers, etc. because, especially in my uncomfortable shoes, I do not want to make lots of trips back to the kitchen- LOL.  As a teacher, therefore, I can handle many things that go on in the classroom.
-I have learned to think on my feet and be calm in any situation.  Just as I cannot tell a customer, “I’m so sorry!  I forgot to turn in your order, which is why it will be late,” I cannot tell a child during a real tornado drill, “We are all going to die!  Take cover!”
-At the same time, I’ve continued to see that honesty is the best policy.  If a customer asks what margaritas I recommend, I oftentimes get in trouble by the mangers, because I don’t suggest the expensive ones and tell the customers that the $4.99 house ones are just as good as the $8 expensive ones for people like me who do not drink margaritas often.  My favorite thing on the menu, when asked, is the Chicken Caesar Pita, which is one of the cheapest things.  If you ask what appetizer I suggest, I say go for the chips and salsa, because they have free refills. I know that this makes the check average less, but more than once I have been rewarded with a bigger tip for saving the customers money.  Likewise, I am honest with my students.  I warn them that certain parts of Spanish are just hard to learn, such as the difference in ser versus estar.  However, these have to be learned.
-On this soapbox of mine, I’ve learned a lot about stereotyping in this job. I’ll be honest.  If a customer asks me how much water is, I get worried.  If they order KWAY-SO for queso and MARE-LOT for Merlot, I get worried.  However, some of my favorite regular customers are those whom other servers have judged as not being worthy of a good tip.  I’ve treated them well, and they’ve come back to me.  At the same time, as soon as I walk in the door, I’m not Julie, the PhD student.  To my customers and the managers, I’m Julie K., the server, who falls into every sterotype of a server that customers have made.  I can’t tell you the number of times a patron has told me that I am good with children and could consider teaching or have asked if I have a “real” job outside of Chili’s.  When mistakes happen, it is amazing how much better I am treated if I happen to slip in my education.  Suddenly, I’m treated like a human and not as a dog that is having orders barked at her.  The point of this is that I’ve learned that I can’t judge a book by its cover, and there is so much more to my students than what is on the outside.
-Finally, since I’m writing this blog for EDTEC 665, I need to mention technology somewhere in this post, and the restaurant does have a lot of it.  All of the servers have to swipe a card to put in their orders.  This computer always changes, and since I only work one night a week, there is much to relearn each week.  The orders then go back to the kitchen.  I’m always amazed that one order can be split between the appetizer man, the guy who grills food, the guy who makes sandwiches, and the one who fries food, yet it all come out at the same time.  Other technology is in the form of the buzzers that the hostess uses when we are on a wait, which in his economy, we have not had to use.  There are computer programs that track everything from how many margaritas I sell to how much the average person spends a night at the restaurant.  It’s crazy how much one meal that one customer orders can tell a restaurant.
This is by far the longest blog entry that I have written, but it was nice to have this forum for reflection on this topic.  ☺

Top 10 Things Samantha and Julie Have Done For Their Project So Far

10.  We brainstormed a project that we could do together that would utilize both of our skills, even though one of us teaches and one of us does not.
9.  We decided that our major project is going to focus on training teachers.  We are pretending that we two of the technology staff members of a school corporation who are in charge of educating the teachers on the new requirement that the school district has, which is that each of them must have a basic website for their classrooms.
8.  We made the decision to house the video in a website, where the teachers will be able to refer back if they have any additional questions.
7.  Other components  of our website will include: be a contact form where the teachers can contact us, should they have any questions that are not answered by the video or website, our e-mail addresses as well, and if time allows, the video into shorter sections in podcasts, so that the teachers can refer to just a specific section on how to make the website that they need to review.

6.  We researched classroom websites to compare and contrast the components of them.  This way, we knew what elements to train the teachers to include in their websites.

5.  We examined Netscape Composer, iWeb, yola.com, and Rapid Weaver to see which one would be best to use for this project and chose to use Rapid Weaver because one of our team members has experience teaching it to undergraduates and the mock school that we will be teaching how to design a classroom website will have it on their computers.

4.  We learned that there is an important relationship between the trainer and trainee and that it can have an impact on the training session

3.  Because of this trainer/trainee relationship, we decided to have an introductory segment, introducing ourselves as trainers, in our project.  This is important so that the trainees feel like they know us before the training begins.

2.  We wrote our Literature Review

1.  We made a plan for finishing the rest of the project

Pleasantville and the Rule of Thirds

For this blog entry in EDTEC 665 , I am doing the class assignment, which is to watch a movie and chose one aspect of cinematography discussed in class to write about, based on a classic move that we chose.  The movie could be approved by the professor or come from a list he gave us.  So I chose Pleasantville, because it is one of the newest ones on the list.  The last I checked, I think that I am the first person in class doing this blog entry, so I hope that I am doing it correctly.

Prior to watching Pleasantville, I chose to focus on the Rule of Thirds. Cinematographer John Lindley began using it right at the beginning of the movie, with a close-ups of the main character, David and a random girl.  The opening scene moved on to this girl talking to a friend, in a medium shot.  Just as we had discussed in class, throughout this scene, characters heads were off centered, and their heads were cut off to ensure that the Rule of Thirds remained established throughout the scene.

There are too many instances of the Rule of Thirds for me to point out each and every one, as that would literally involve a multipage paper instead of a blog entry.  Therefore, I will just point out a few situations where I saw it being used:

-I noticed that, within the rule, the rule was used.  For example, there was one brief scene that showed students sitting in an audience, hearing about their gloomy job prospects for the future.  The audience positioned in the lower, 1/3 of the horizontal portion of the screen.  Then, up at the front of the room, the teacher lecturing the class was perfectly situated to the right of the screen and followed the rule of the thirds.  This montage continued, and the scene moved on to another teacher lecturing the class about their chances of catching HIV in the year 2000.  The students sat at their desks, in the lower 2/3 of the screen, while the blackboard was at the top 1/3 of the horizontal portion it.  The teacher was positioned just off centered enough to follow the perfect vertical alignment for the Rule of Thirds.

-This montage went directly into a scene where David was listening to his mom talk on the phone about a custody battle.  This scene was full of the Rule of Thirds, from the black and white TV that was offset to the left to close-up of David, where his eyes were perfectly positioned on intersecting lines of the imaginary tic-tac-toe-board that my mind drew on the screen, to the mother that walked in and out of one side of the screen to the lamp that was in the screen with her on the other side when she spoke.

-The scene with David/Bud’s and Jennifer’s/Mary Sue’s first breakfast in Pleasantville shows the Rule of Thirds well.  The father sits at the breakfast table, reading the paper, which is at the right side of the screen.  The mother enters holding pancakes from the left, and puts them on the table, which is positioned on the lower 1/3 of the horizontal portion of the screen.  The mother moves around, serving the kids, never being in the center of the screen.  The close-ups of Jennifer and David show their unease in this new situation, perfectly positioning their eyes at intersecting lines, where the imaginary tic-tac-toe lines are located.

-Another great use of the Rule of Thirds is when Skip first sees a color in the form of a red rose.  The Establishment Shot happens as he drives his car up the driveway of Mary Sue’s house after a date.  This scene alternates between shots of the red rose and close-ups of Skip’s reaction to it.  The rose is in the perfect position of the imaginary gridlines of the tic-tac-toe board for the Rule of Thirds.  The rose also appears to be in the same position as Skip’s face, because when Skip moves his face, as if studying the rose in from one frame to another, the rose moves as well.

-Finally, the Rule of Thirds is illustrated in an interesting way in the scene where Bud introduces his boss, Mr. Johnson, to the world of art.  The pictures in the art book that he shows him are vertical, horizontal, and at a diagonal yet still follow the Rule of Thirds.  The scene changes from Bud to Mr. Johnson to the book full of artwork.  There are reaction shots, close-ups and several one person camera shots that all follow the Rule of Thirds.  The music adds to the felling of amazement that Mr. Johnson feels as he experiences colored artwork for the first time.

As I watched Pleasantville, I completed this project in two ways.  The first was at my sister’s house with the move in the DVD player, where I could watch the movie on TV, hit the pause button on the remote control, and take notes on my laptop.  The other half of it was done on my laptop, where I could not watch the movie and type my notes at the same time but rather had to pause the computer with my mouse and handwrite my notes.  Instead of rewinding a few seconds of the scene, I had to go to the beginning of the scene.  So, if any classmates are reading this blog that have not started this project yet, I would recommend that watching the movie on your home DVD player and typing notes on your computer.  This is much easier than handwriting them, and not having to watch the entire scene just to see a few seconds at the end of it will save much time and frustration. ☺

Experimenting with the Rule of Thirds and Other Techniques

After the EMI discussion in EDTEC 665 last night, I wanted to test out the techniques mentioned in class.  Since my niece is not available for photographs tonight, and the cats won’t sit still long enough for pictures, I am using past pictures that are in my iPhoto library and seeing if I can illustrate the rules that we learned about last night.  So, here is an Over the Shoulder Shot that I took of Michelle when she was just a few months old.  Had I known of the Rule of Thirds then, I would have had her head over to the left more and her face in the mirror more in the middle third of the picture.  If she was sitting up at the time the picture was taken, the final third of the picture could have been part of her legs or feet.

Illustration of An Over the Shoulder Shot

Last night we learned about the composition in Two-Person Shots.  Here are another coworker and I who worked together the summer I taught in Europe, at the start of our journey together.  The second picture is better, as it follows the Rule of Thirds and places more emphasis on us and not the city skyline.

Original Two-Person Shot

Two-Person Shot Using the Rule of Thirds

One of the rules from last night was to Fill the Frame with Humans.  Here is a group picture from the Red Square in Moscow, which was one of the stops on the trip.  The first one shows the buildings, but you cannot see any of the people.  In the second photograph, where the frame is filled with humans, if I were to blow up the picture or put it in a PowerPoint presentation that were projected onto a screen, I could actually point out some of the students.

Original Group Photo

Edited Group Shot Where Photograph Is Filled With Humans

Finally, here is a One-Person Shot of me in front of a waterfall in Norway.  The natural instinct was for the person taking it to center me in the picture.  So, in the second photo, I went against my instinct and boldly moved myself to one side.  To be honest, this was a scary crop to do, but I did it and actually like the result.  Wow!  I don’t think that I can convince my friends and family to not center me in pictures, but I can experiment with this when cropping photos in iPhoto, as I did with this blog entry.

Original One-Person Shot

Edited One-Person Shot With the Rule of Thirds

Julie K.’s Critique of the Montage of a Classmate

After unsuccessfully not being able to view many of my classmates’ montages on my iMac, it was nice to come across this montage of a classmate at: http://scdivine.iweb.bsu.edu/edtec665/ which I could actually view.  My classmate’s introduction to this montage about her two-month study abroad trip in Europe took me back to the summer I spent teaching in Europe, and I eagerly hit the play button to vicariously have a summary of her travels.

My classmate created a great montage!  Her use of movement made it feel like I was walking the paths of the college she attended in England and climbing the steps of the buildings.  Some of the pictures looked like postcards, and she had a variety of interesting transitions between them.

Interestingly enough, initially I wrote that my main improvement for the montage would be to make the pictures smaller, because when viewing the through Blackboard, they were hard to see, and I had to scroll around the page to view them horizontally.  Then I lost my Internet connection, came back to her page, and the pictures all fit well into the screen horizontally but now are too tall to fit the screen and cut off the tops of buildings and famous monuments.  So, making them slightly smaller and able to fit on one page would enable to viewer to see the whole photograph without scrolling around at all to view it.  A few of the pictures seemed blurry and out of focus, but this could have come from making them so large, and reducing the size of the photographs could fix this.

It was fun for me to watch this montage and think, “I went there!  I went there, too!”  Just like my classmate, I, too, learned much from my trip to Europe and miss the adventures.  Now it is great that she has this montage as a digital memory of it.  Unlike prints in a photo album, these images will not turn yellow over time.  Likewise, one of my biggest frustrations about my various overseas travels is that no one ever wants to hear about them.  In the future, I think that my friends and family would be more likely to watch a two-three minute video montage of photographs, which are labeled similar to how she labeled hers, than they would be to listen to me tell about my travels or flip through prints.  The challenge would be to pick the best pictures, but her travel photomontage has inspired me to create one for my future travels.

My Research About the Rule of Thirds

In EDTEC 665 this week, we learned about the Rule of Thirds.  Dr. Stuve took a classmate’s image and cropped it to show us an example of how it is done.  I wanted to learn more about the rule, so that is what I researched for this blog entry.  According to http://jlphotosusa.com/RuleOfThirds.html, the Rule of Thirds is one of the most famous rules for composing pictures.  From Dr. Stuve’s lesson I knew that it involved dividing an image into thirds horizontally and positioning the subject into one of the thirds.  However, research taught me that the Rule of Thirds also involves dividing the frame vertically and positioning a subject into one of the frames. At http://photography.about.com/od/takingpictures/ig/Rule-of-Thirds/ I learned that the Rule of Thirds is used to explain what part of the photograph the human eye gravitates toward first.  This site recommends using the imagination to divide an image into the nine squares of a tic-tac-toe board.  The imaginary lines are the second strongest focal points in the image, and the four points where the four lines intersect are the strongest focal points to the human eye.  This is illustrated by the picture of the girl sitting by the waterfall, which is taken from the about.com website. She is the subject of the photograph, and she is positioned along a focal line.  Her face is also at a point of intersection of two lines, which is an area to which the eye is drawn.  The photograph that I chose of the lighthouse, from the previously discussed jlphotousa.com website, illustrates the Rule of Thirds well.  The lighthouse is in the left, vertical third, and the horizon is in the bottom, horizontal third.

This week was definitely one where I have learned much in class.  Once I have time to take pictures again, the Rule of thirds will be something I remember when taking future photographs.

Tic-Tac-Toe Illustration of the Rule of Thirds

This shows a horizonal and vertical use of the Rule of Thirds

Top 10 Things I Learned While Creating My Montage This Week

These are in no particular order:

10.    Choose a subject that you like, because you will be spending lots of time

with it while making the montage.

9.    200 pictures is too many to include it, and had I not chosen a 5 minute

36 second song, and put more than one picture on a page, I would

have had too many pictures when using 76 of them.  So the next time I

make a montage, I will try to narrow it down to 25 good pictures for a

2 to 3 minute song.

8.    All about the world of iTunes and how to look up, purchase, and

download my first song

7.    How to make a montage in PowerPoint, complete with transitions

6.    That this process put me on an emotional roller coaster, from the

adrenaline rush when learning how to put the soundtrack onto my

montage and getting it timed to have the slides be exactly 6.2 seconds

long and end when the song stopped, to the frustration I felt when

learning that the soundtrack would not transfer to a QuickTime movie.

5.    How to transfer a PowerPoint montage into iMovie, edit it, and then make

it into a QuickTime movie

4.    That it is important to surround yourself with individuals who know what

they are doing and can help you out when you need it

3.    The iCare desk in the Teacher’s College does more than just help

freshmen with new computers, as student worker Josh patiently kept

me from panicking and taught me how to convert my PowerPoint

presentation into an iMovie.

2.    Classmate Sam is not only a great friend but also knows a lot about

iTunes, as I found out when she helped me on this project

1.       That Dr. Stuve meant it when he said to have fun with this project.  Once

I allowed myself to take this advice, I actually enjoyed working on

my montage and created a project for EDTEC 665  that I am proud to

share with the  class.

***Because I used an iTunes song, there are lots of copyright laws, so my montage can only be shared with the class on our discussion board.***

The Rule of Thirds

This week, Dr. Stuve wrote in his blog about how the Rule of Thirds helps improve the appearance of pictures.  So, I tried it with one of my pictures.  You will see the cropped picture of Ernie that follows the Rule of Thirds; it gets larger when it is clicked.  Below it is the original photograph.  I think that the Rule of Thirds picture looks much better than the original one.  It really emphasizes Ernie, since he is at the forefront of the picture.  Therefore, although it may be hard to remember to always position the subject in the front when using the Rule of Thirds in the initial shot, I now know that I can use iPhoto when retouching pictures.  They can then be printed or used in a digital presentation.

Picture of Ernie When Using the Rule of Thirds

Original Photograph of Ernie

One Step At A Time

One benefit of being in graduate school fulltime these past two years is that it has given me the chance to spend time with my family.  My niece was born four months before I began the program, so I’ve had the invaluable chance to see her grow from a baby into a toddler.  She recently has discovered the steps at the playground.  As this photograph I took this week shows, there are many steps to the top of the jungle gym.  However, my niece takes them one step at a time.  When she gets to the top, her reward is going down the slide.  From watching her, I have been reminded of a life lesson.
Now I am stressed out, because I see many assignments for EDTEC 665 and my other summer courses.  However, I need to conquer the items on my To Do List one at a time.  It will not be easy, and there is a lot of work ahead to get everything done.  However, it will be worth it.  When I finish the assignments and courses, my reward will be a feeling of accomplishment at a job well done, and, most importantly, my PhD. I have known this lesson, but I am glad that my two-year-old niece reminded me of it during our trip to the playground this week.

Take it one step at a time