Have you ever had one of those ideas that seem great at the time but when you start to do it, it becomes harder than you thought it would be? This workshop was like that. What made it a challenge was I have learnt to edit photos using a professional package like, Fireworks, Photoshop Elements and Photoshop. These are fabulous programmes but if, like the school I was in, you couldn't afford more than a couple of copies due to the license prices then you were stuck. (I don't understand products being charged to schools at a commercial price, but that is another blog).

So I went searching for something that was as good as these but free. I tried out several, some really good, others not so good. The criteria I set was: had to be easy to use, child friendly, had to have a magic wand, had to be able to alter colour, not cost anything, work on both Mac and PC. Two sites I looked at and go back to are Foto Flexer and Aviary. However neither had a good magic want that met my needs.

I stumbled across one called Sumo Paint. Once I found one I had to learn how to use it and produce a manual for others to use. It had all I wanted and so much more. But like anything takes a while to get your head around it. I found the online help, unhelpful but having used other photo editing programmes I was able to create a manual for the teachers who came to the workshop.

The workshop involved getting to know mimio Gallery, how to organise it to suit the teacher, how to add and delete galleries. We then went on to using Sumo Paint to delete the background from the images we wanted in our gallery. This course was 3 and a half hours long with morning tea provided. The teachers found it challenging but useful. The feedback has led us to splitting the workshop into two as there was too much content. Here is what one of the participants said,

""I found this course to be extremely helpful and useful. I learnt skills to organise my galleries and create galleries to suit my class programme. As ever the delivery was adjusted to suit my needs and skills. I would highly recommend it to those people who have a creative streak and are happy to play..." Katrina Jenkins (Takapuna Normal Intermediate)