ADAPTING AND MAKING CLIPART RELEVANT FOR

ENLIVENING CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION AT

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL LEVEL

Dr. Lalit Kishore

Clipart: What?

Clip art is a simple pre-made recognizable out-line or shape graphic to illustrate ideas, concepts and information in personal, instructional, professional and commercial work.

Clipart during print-media eraDuring the print-technology era, the term "clipart“ stood for the practice of physically cutting images from pre-existing printed works for use in other publishing projects.

During that time clipart was used through a process called paste up.

In the present era of personal computers, the extensive use of clipart has became possible through desktop publishing.

Limited in-house of desktop publishing consists of creating brochures, illustrated hand-outs, e-newsletters, contextual ICTs for teaching and small group presentations have generated a need for creating and storing pre-made simple electronic images and using bit-mapped clipart pieces.

Clipart objects: Examples

Scarce use for classroom teaching A lot of clip art is available in the

computers and on the internet, but they are hardly being used by the classroom instructors to enliven their teaching.

However the communication industry and commerce are using the clip art profusely. There is a need to introduce clip art as an instructional aid in teacher preparation and in-service courses.

Clip art as an illustration

Clip art as an illustration is simple line or shape drawings created by hand or by computer software.

In computers, vector graphics file formats use geometric modeling to create and describe an image as a series of points, lines, curves, polygons and shapes.

However, clip art does not include stock photography, which is wrongfully used by some as a part of graphic arts.

Adaptation for classroom instruction For classroom purposes, teachers

require to by the content described in the textbooks which have pictures to be converted into hand drawn clipart to be digitally photographed and stored.

Adaptation require the drawing of the simplified outline of shape of various objects given as pictures in the textbooks for use in the worksheets.

Adaptation methods

With some training or through self-effort teachers can learn to draw shapes and take digital photographs for storage and appropriate use.

If, there is less time tracing of outlines from pictures from the textbooks on butter paper with black sketch pen can be done.

Adaptation example 1

Note the outlining simplicity

Adaptation example 2

Look at the feet that have been drawn as representation of reality as simple shapes

Adaptation example 3

Skill acquisition by teachers

With many progressive schools encouraging teachers to produce their own instructional and learning material as well as production of project work reports, teachers need to learn: shape drawing skill, and vector graphics formats that use

geometric modeling to describe an image as a series of points, lines, curves, and polygons.