Say Cheese!!! ...or “chicken”

Another milestone for the Sunridge Computer Club – our first guest speaker. I’ll get to that in a bit. But first...

Tonight’s agenda.

• Welcome Ferdie van der Mescht
• Goodbye Devon Ferreira
• Computer Club badges for Sunridge uniforms
• Taking register
• Hand out comics
• Hand over to guest speaker (Mrs. Beverly Darlow)

Unfortunately we have to say goodbye to one of our members (Devon Ferreira) as he is no longer able to attend the computer club meetings due to other commitments.

However, we give Ferdie van der Mescht (codenamed “Cyber”) in grade 6 a warm welcome to our club. Ferdie is new to Sunridge Primary. Having only joined our school from the 3rd term, he missed all our computer programming lessons. However, he did the same June assessment as all the other grade 6 learners who had the benefit of attending all the computer programming lessons. Ferdie – with very little guidance – figured out what he had to do by himself and scored 95%.

Digital Photography by Mrs. Beverly Darlow.

Beverly Darlow, a professional photographer, was generous enough to take time out of her schedule as mom and photographer to cover some very interesting points regarding digital photography with us.

Armed with two little helpers and some impressive equipment, Beverly gave us a crash course on how to compose a decent photograph.
We learned about apertures, field of depth, shutter speeds, focus, daylight, shadows, angles, frames, etc. She also showed us some examples of good and not so good photographs and shared some of her experiences. We learned how important it is to consider the background when photographing a subject. It is now clear that a lot of preparation goes into taking a good photograph. Beverly also brought her whole backdrop kit and took some portrait photographs of our club members which I will email to the individuals as soon as I have received them from Beverly.

You can contact Beverly at Darlow Photography on 082 458 6502 for professional photographs. She does media, sports portraits, corporate events, etc.

Competition

I announced our own Computer Club Amateur Photography Competition tonight. Entry is free. EACH member must submit ONE recent (snapped between 18 October 2010 and 15 November 2010) photograph using the skills Beverly taught us this evening. The topic for this photographic competition is... wait for it... “fruit and vegetables”. So moms, if you see your potatoes going missing or you’re greeted with a smiling banana when you check the fruit bowl you can blame it on me.

The Prize.

Darlow Photography has generously sponsored a family or individual photo shoot to the value of R550.00.

Next Club Meeting

Our next club meeting is on Monday, 1 November 2010. With my birthday around the corner, I’ll have some cooldrink and cake for our members. So again, you can blame any spoiled appetites on me.

Thank you

A big thank you to Beverly Darlow, our committed club members, and their parents who for dropping them off and collecting them – we really cannot do this without you.

This is Motherboard signing off.

Comical comix

I decided to eeeeeaaaaaase into the 4th term with something not so intensive as robotics, definitions, and properties. But more about that later.



On the agenda for today was:

1. Welcome back
2. Robotics outdoor excursion
3. Next SCC meeting (18 October) on digital photography
4. Comics lesson

Parents please take note that the following meeting of the Sunridge Computer Club will be on Monday, the 18th of October at 17:15. The lesson will be on digital photography. We'll be joined by a professional photographer who will be our guess speaker for the evening. I think you'll agree with me when I say that we are fortunate to have point-and-click digital cameras and just about all of our mobile phones have cameras in them too. But how much use is this if we do not know how to take a decent picture???

Our guest speaker will also be taking digital portrait pictures of us all, so members are encouraged to dress up, brush their teeth, comb their hair, and practice their sunshine smiles for when the photographer says: "say cheese".

As for today's lesson, we created our own comics on a website called http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/.

Makebeliefscomix allows one to make 2 - 4 panel comics with a variety of characters to choose from. 20 Different fun cartoon characters - each with 4 different costumes - are on offer. The website also has 25 props to choose from - anything from pizza slices to hats. Various tools can be used to flip, scale, move, re-order, and delete characters and props. Makebeliefscomix also allows one to colour the panels and select a variety of talk and thought balloons in addition to using panel prompts. Upon completion, the comics can be printed and/or emailed

We opted to mail all the comics to my computer so that I can print them out for us in colour and laminate them.

Like I said, this is nothing hectic - just a nice fun way to kick start the 4th term.

This is Motherboard signing off.