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Learning how to make it look good
Williams High School students learn the ins and outs of Photoshop on new computers recently purchased by school district

Clara Beard/WGCN <br>
Cheyenne Lienhard works on her new Photoshop skills during a recent class conducted by Ryan Williams at Williams High School.

Clara Beard/WGCN <br> Cheyenne Lienhard works on her new Photoshop skills during a recent class conducted by Ryan Williams at Williams High School.

WILLIAMS - Even though he didn't show the Williams High School (WHS) journalism class how to make people fat, Williams-Grand Canyon News Associate Editor Ryan Williams' Photoshop class still got an A plus.

This year, Christmas came early for WHS and Williams Middle School when they received 50 computers complete with up-to-date software. And, as an added bonus, the district also purchased the newest version of Adobe Photoshop CS5 for the computer lab.

According to District Technology Coordinator Gabi Uebel, the purchase was funded through district money.

"It is phenomenal," Uebel said. "Just having the new computers, because the old ones were fairly old. They were slow and clunky and didn't operate the way they should. They are really nice computers, they are HP's and they have the I5 processor."

Williams, who also works as a wedding and portrait photographer, offered to help the students become more comfortable navigating their way around the program after Journalism Teacher Tristan Heisley approached him with the idea.

"It is really great that now the computer lab has 25 computers with the most recent version of Photoshop," Williams said. "Students in Mr. Heisley's classes have the opportunitiy to learn computer skills that are relevant to jobs in graphic design, journalism and more."

He added he was pleased the journalism class was so receptive and eager to learn the program, which was taught over one class period for three weeks.

"It was really fun to teach the kids," he said. "The students in the class were definitely excited to have the opportunity to learn Photoshop."

Williams added that despite learning some of the computer application's more useful tools, kids being kids, they wanted to learn some more dubious techniques.

"Some of the kids wanted to learn how to make people look fat," Williams said. "Thankfully, it's pretty difficult to pull off. They'll have to learn that on their own time."

Heisley said it is amazing to have Photoshop on all the computers in his lab. It's a considerable upgrade from last year, when the program was only on three computers, including his own.

"We didn't use it that much last year," he said. "We did really basic stuff, nothing like we are going to do this year. We are going to use it a lot."

He added his students looked forward to their Photoshop classes each week, making it a positive experience for everyone.

"I would really like to thank Ryan for teaching us about Photoshop; it is an incredible opportunity for the students to learn from someone who knows what they are doing, because it is just too massive a program to learn on their own," he said.

Along with the use of Photoshop to create the school's yearbook, Heisley said the district also purchased an Ipad for his class. This year's yearbook theme is "comic book," and Heisley said the Ipad comes in very handy when it comes to creating comic strips.

"So what we are going to do is use that for all the comic book aspects of the yearbook and everything else we'll use Photoshop," he said.

Yearbook editor Amanda Wamble thinks all the new technology available for the journalism students is "pretty cool."

"I'm excited I get to use the Ipad, and love that there is just a lot more technology we have available to us this year," she said.

Williams Unified School District Superintendent Steve Hudgens agreed, reiterating how much the students enjoyed the classes given by Williams.

"Technology is crucial, but can be expensive," said Williams Unified School District Superintendent Steve Hudgens. "That is why partnerships between entities such as the school and the newspaper are so important. I received nothing but positive feedback from students on how much they learned when Ryan taught Photoshop classes at the high school."

Hudgens also emphasized that the community needs to form more partnerships with the city, school and newspaper to make the most of technology they do not have.

"This would drive down costs for all involved," he added.


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