Dec-Jan Missions
December Transmission from Agent 66
December Mission #1:
Aspiring agents, hopefully you have begun reading the second section in the iLife field manual entitled iPhoto: Organizing and Sharing Images. This chapter covers the iPhoto program, part of the iLife suite of applications on your PACE computer. It focuses on themes like digital imaging, importing photos, working with libraries and albums, editing photos, creating photo slideshows, sharing photos, and creating photo cards, books, and calendars. This is a large chapter so take your time with it and try each of the techniques that the the book describes. I will highlight a few of the strategies that come in handy as an agent in your upcoming mini-missions. I am expecting that you will have gone through most of the chapter by the end of January. There will be another agent knowledge quiz coming in February.
December Mission #2: Creative Commons
Working with iPhoto is all about organizing, sharing, and editing images on your computer. But what if you don’t have a digital camera or want an image that you can’t take at home, like of a famous landmark where you will secretly meet another agent on your next mission? The Pyramids in Egypt? The Great Wall of China? The surface of Mars? I am hearing you thinking that you could just download one from the Internet. Not in my spy agency you can’t !!! Most images on the Internet, just like music and movies, are subject to copyright law. This means that you can’t use them without permission. Well, I have a solution to this tricky copyright issue for my agents. Whenever they are putting together a mission portfolio and need a picture or image, they use Creative Commons. This is a site where you can search for images, music, and movies that come wiith permission from the author to use them for personal projects, web sites, school reports, etc. By using these resources, that are licensed for the Creative Commons, you will avoid losing your chance to become a PTA agent (as I don’t hire cheaters). For this mission, I want you to learn more about Creative Commons and how to use the site. The mission instructions follow:
- Visit the Search area to begin exploring the resources you can use on Creative Commons: http://search.creativecommons.org/
- Watch the video there entitled Wanna Work Together?
- Then do a search either for “Mountain Gorilla” or “Tiger Shark” in the search bar found in the green banner area at the top of the page. Check the box next to the search field that says “Search for works I can modify, adapt, or build upon.”
- After clicking the “go” button, check the tabs below that say Google, Yahoo, etc…
- Find a photo of a mountain gorilla that you like and right click on it or control-click to access the hidden menu where you can download an image.
- If you are using Safari, you should see an option in the menu that appears that allows you to save a photo directly to iPhoto. Cool eh? If you and using another browser, like Firefox, then choose “Save Image As” and download the image to your desktop. From there you can open iPhoto and simply drag the image into the iPhoto library to save it to iPhoto for future use.
- After you have completed this mission, leave a comment on the switchboard explaining which site you downloaded the image from and what the title of the photo was (if there was one). Also include why you chose the photo of that particular mountain gorilla or tiger shark.
- Keep the photo in your iPhoto as we will use it for a future mini-mission. Agent 66- Out…
Below find my Mountain Gorilla. My comment might read:
I found this image searching for mountain gorilla on the creative commons site. I found it under the Flickr tab. The title in Flickr was Gorilla gorilla beringei. I chose this picture because this gorilla looks like me if I don’t get enough sleep. Tony B