iLife

This week’s assignment is to familiarize ourselves with iLife (http://www.apple.com/ilife/). In order to get the basic information on what iLife is I resorted both to Apple’s webpage and Wikipedia. According to Wikipedia, this is iLife (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILife):

iLife is a suite of software applications developed by Apple for organizing, editing, and publishing photos, movies, and music. The suite comprises five applications: iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand, and iWeb, all of which run on the MAC OS X operating system. The latest release, iLife '09, was announced on January 6, 2009, and is included with new Mac computers. The suite is also sold standalone (computer software that can work offline).

One reading the above, I switched my window back to Apple’s website, glanced more over their display of the iLife applications, and realized that I have interacted with at least three out of the five applications included in the suite--iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand. Being a student, I know from first-hand experience how useful iLife can be when it comes to teaching/learning. So here are two questions that have been asked of the class to answer:

What story could your students tell using iLife? And what content would they learn?

To better oneself with the suite, I would have my students utilize both iPhoto and GarageBand (this does not limit them to branching out and using the other three applications if they please). The assignment would focus around modern artists and their works. The goal would be for the students to learn more about the life of these artists through presenting a brief timeline/story. In splitting the class up into pairs of twos, I would want them to collect an assortment of photos about their artist to then put together and present on an iPhoto slideshow of the artist’s life. To further expand upon the learning process I would want the pairs to prepare an assortment/mix of music from the artist’s time period on GarageBand to go along with the slideshow. The music will help students to better connect and recall the artist, his/her works, and the time period. When the slideshows and music are completely prepared, I would want the pairs to present a brief oral presentation that corresponds with their use of the iPhoto and GarageBand applications. Hopefully, then, everyone in the classroom can learn about a variety of artists and their works from different times throughout the past century.

*Even better would be if students used iMovie and recorded themselves as the artist at different times in his/her life and incorporated such content in their presentation.