Epson PictureMate - What a Hoot!

Gizmo - from The Barn Owl Centre, Hempsted

Friday 13th Feb was the last session of Owl Babies at Tuffley Primary School.

To celebrate we had a very special visitor - Gizmo!

As part of the activity we took photos using a digital camera, and were then able to use an Epson PictureMate to print off photos in class - every child then had a photo to take home!

The PictureMate was VERY easy to use, take the SD card out of the camera, put into the slot on the PictureMate, choose the photo and print! Very quick, very easy and excellent quality photos!

I have booked out the PictureMate 'till July - but more are available - so go and see Jane C-D and get yours!

wanna picture, mate?

(Picture above: Rigmore is no longer able to resist the call of her Scandinavian ancestors...)

Just a quick blog to tell you about the father's activity day at Park Children's Centre in Stonehouse on Saturday, 11th October. The event made full use of the Epson Picture Mate (PM260 to its friends) - this gives instant photographs on glossy photo paper. The children always love to see the machine in action! We took portrait photographs of the dads, printed out using the Picture Mate, cut them out & stuck them to card dollies that the children had made earlier.

The great thing about the Picture Mate is that it can provide instant results. We have lots of ideas where this could be used, specifically on the new FLLN programme written around the BBC RAW storybook 'Max and Lara's Amazing Travelling Circus'. Just think, you could produce a whole series of sequenced pictures to use in a storybook, taken and printed in the same session!

Disadvantages? Picture Mate seems to eat print cartridges (maybe 30-35 photos per cartridge). Also, our original PM seems to have given up the ghost after 2 outings (do you think some little angel might have fed it a wax crayon when we weren't looking?)

So, the Picture Mate is very useful, generates exciting ideas but can be expensive and need careful maintenance. Which reminds me, thanks to Jane C-D for getting me up and running again on the blog.

Epsom Printer

I used the Epsom printer this morning for the first time and it worked very well. I had 45 miutes to set the printer up before the session started. I rang my colleague Sara (rather early in the morning!) for advice as I knew she'd used the printer and had found it straight forward. We're buddies on the Observation and Support Team, I think it would be worth setting up a buddy system for tutors using elearning equipment. Thank you Sara!

I knew that 8 of my 11 ALDD learners weren't attending due to staff training so took the opportunity to suggest a walk, taking photos of things seen that represented Spring. (We're doing a joint piece on Spring). Learners took the photos, with support. When we returned we had 40 minutes, to warm up with a cuppa and print some of the photos. The printing session was very interactive - learners chose to print 6 small photos rather than 3 larger. (The printer offers the choice of one or two photos to A5 sized paper). They chose 6 of the 23 photos they'd taken and were very interested in the printing process.

The printer is very straightforward to use, instructions are very clear, I think it would be an ideal piece of equipment for tutors to start off with when they decide to learn to use elearning equipment.