Recommended time
Minimum 90 minutes, maximum two hours

Goals for the session

• Learn how to digitally edit a photo
• Evaluate photo essay Web sites

Outcomes

• Edited photos
• Web site evaluation charts

Materials and equipment

• A computer with Internet and email access
• A copy of the book Witnesses to Freedom: Young People Who Fought for Civil Rights, by Belinda Rochelle
• Web site evaluation sheets
• Newsprint sheets or a roll of butcher paper
• Pens
• Colored markers
• Composition books (one for each participant and facilitator)

Part 1: Read-Aloud

What is it?
Suggested reading is the second chapter of Witnesses to Freedom: Young People Who Fought for Civil Rights, by Belinda Rochelle. Click here for other recommended books.

Suggested questions

• Why do you think African American families turned to the Supreme Court to fight for changes in the public schools? What other actions could have been done?
• Spottswood says that as a result of the pressure on his family and the other families in the lawsuit to desegregate the schools, "I was expected to be perfect, and there's no such thing as a perfect child." How do you think you would have handled being in this situation?

Part 2: Photo Editing

What is it?
Introduce software that can be used to change photographs. Adobe PhotoShop and other image production/editing programs have many tools and functions. Demonstrating how to use just a few tools at a time will make the program less overwhelming.

How to
First, use one of the photos taken by the participants in the previous session to demonstrate how to use several of the editing tools in Adobe PhotoShop. Try the following tools: replicating an image (stamp tool), cutting an image (crop tool), rotating an image and enlarging and decreasing part of an image to view (magnifier tool). Be sure to show how to save the original photo and work from a renamed duplicate. After demonstrating, have participants work in pairs or individually to change the photos they have taken.

Next, bring the group back together to show an example of a specific photo alteration and ask the group to try to reproduce it. The Mona Lisa Illusion from the San Francisco Exploratorium offers an example of several simple changes that can be made to the appearance of the Mona Lisa. Identify the changes and then try to produce them with one of your photos or download a Mona Lisa image and try to reproduce the illusion exactly as it appears.

Time permitting, do a third exercise with another tool in PhotoShop. The Webmonkey PhotoShop Crash Course has easy-to-follow lesson plans on specific tools and techniques. Select one lesson to try. Another site with PhotoShop lessons is Brigham Young University in Rexburg, Idaho.

Part 3: Web Review

What is it?
Have participants review additional photo essay sites, building on the review done in the previous session.

How to
This time, ask participants to pay attention to the design and navigation of the sites as well as the content. Use a Web site evaluation chart to focus the site reviews. Have participants work in pairs or individually.

The following sites have charts that can be adapted:

• From Discovery Channel School, a middle-school-level Web site evaluation chart and additional information on Web site evaluation
• From Midlink Magazine, a Web page evaluation form by Ligon Middle School

Suggested photo essay sites to review

• Civil Rights Photo Tour
  This site from the Seattle Times features famous civil rights photos. Also links to a civil rights timeline and many resources related to civil rights.
  
  
• In Transit: Interviews and Photographs of People on the Bus
  An artist created this site containing interviews and photos of people using public transportation in the San Francisco Bay Area.
  
  
• YO! Youth Outlook Photography Workshop
  Part of a news organization that produces and distributes articles, photography and radio programming by teens.
  

Part 4: Email Journals

What is it?
Work on email journals, as described in Session 1, Part 5.

Part 5: Personal Reading

What is it?
Participants select books or other material to read silently for at least 10 minutes.

Extension activities
Complete the Webmonkey PhotoShop Crash Course.

Read and discuss a news article written by or about teens reporting or taking action on issues in their community. Articles can be downloaded from YO! Youth Outlook free of charge.

LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman, two African American teenagers in Chicago, created an award-winning documentary for National Public Radio called Ghetto Life 101. They created a second documentary, Remorse: The 14 Stories of Eric Morse, about two young boys who dropped a 5-year-old child out of a 14th-floor window at the Ida B. Wells public housing development. Audio excerpts can be downloaded free of charge from the NPR Web site. Whole tapes and transcripts can also be ordered through the NPR Web site.