Thursday 12 January 2012

Man on a roof - (Almost) Infinite Ideas

Almost Infinite ELT Ideas, by Sandy Millin is an award-winning blog written for teachers, which contains a rich resource of pictures to be used as prompts for lesson ideas. Teachers are invited to adapt and use the images as they wish. (Almost) Infinite Ideas won the Tefl.net Site of the Month Award in May 2011.


Who Is This Man On A Roof??
I am very proud to say that one of my pictures, taken in Oxford during the summer, has been selected as a picture prompt for this week's activity, which is open to all teachers. Please go to the post "Man on a roof", and imagine how you would use the picture and then if you like, please write a few ideas in the comments box. It would be really interesting to know how you would exploit this image.

I have to confess, I was fascinated when I saw the sight for the first time. I literally did a double take whilst riding my bicycle along Broad Street (see image above) and almost toppled off it, because I couldn't believe my eyes! Who or what on earth was it on top of the roof??

So, without more ado, head over to Man on a roof right now to see what you think!!!

When you have done that, don't forget to bookmark (Almost) Infinite Ideas so that you can have a valuable resource of interesting photos to exploit with your classes.

How to take the perfect photo
Chiew Pang from IASKU fame has recently written a guest post on ELTPics blog Take a photo and ...... outlining some great tips for taking photos! Have a read below, and then see how much better your photos will turn out!

Know your photos, know your camera

A Photo I'm Quite Proud Of
I took this photo today whilst sitting on the back of a big motorbike, which was travelling quite nimbly! I managed to catch the shadow of myself and K and I was thrilled it didn't come out too terribly blurred. You can actually see my shadow taking the photo. I'm still not quite sure how this photo came out like this, so I guess I was very lucky!!

2 comments:

Chiew said...

Great photos, Jan - it looks so gorgeous with that snow-capped mountain in the distance.

To take photos while you're moving and for them not to be blurred isn't easy. The only thing you can do is to make sure the camera is as still as possible - if your bike hits a bump, forget about that photo! The other thing is to get a very fast speed so that a little shake may not matter that much. Of course, if like the majority of us, you have a point-and-click, it's a bit tricky. When you push your finger on the shutter slightly, you can see the reading. 1/500 would be good though you may get away with 1/250. If you can't get this speed, you may have to push your ISO up (remember I said to put it as low as possible?)

Janet Bianchini said...

Thanks Chiew, for commenting here, and I really appreciate your great advice! My compact point and click camera was a bit tricky to handle whilst I was moving at a reasonable speed!! We did hit a few bumps along the way, so I had to delete a whole bunch.

I am going to try and be more aware of how to take better photos in 2012, so will be practising a bit more.