Blue Ribbon Reviews March 2006
By Linda Lindroth

Engaging your students in your art and music curriculum will definitely be easier to accomplish with these great technology tools.

Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 4.0
Adobe products are designed with the professional in mind, but ease of use is their focus. This certainly fits the mold. Photoshop Elements 4.0 is rich with features for the "power user," but easy enough for the novice to find success.

Edit, manage and share pictures. It's easy to import your photos and this tool supports even .tif, .png and .pdf files. You can add metadata to your photos, including keyword tags for use in sorting, as well as titles and captions for your photos. Just sort by the tags.

There are a number of editing elements for artistic effects. A new feature of 4.0 automatically removes red eye when you download pictures from your camera. A Magic Extractor can remove sections in related objects – so you can cut a heart shape out of a photo to use in a scrapbook page with multiple layers. There is a Healing Brush and a Spot Healing Brush to clean up any blemish or flaw in your picture. The Magic Selection Brush lets you quickly select and edit just a section of a photo.

And, of course, you can add objects to enhance your photo. Photoshop Elements 4.0 automatically creates version sets for edited files and keeps track of the changes. Photomerge will create a panoramic picture from one or more photos. For scrapbooking, you can add talk bubbles, layer two photos and create slideshows, album pages, calendars or cards and send to a Palm OS handheld, a cell phone or share through e-mail. Your photos will look professional every time!

Visit www.adobe.com or call 800-833-6687 for more information. Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0, bundled with Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0, Win, $149.

Music Ace Maestro
Music Ace Maestro from Harmonic Vision supplements traditional music instruction for students ages eight to adult. Maestro teaches basic music skills using three learning environments – lessons, games and a Music Doodle Pad.

Lessons environment. Guided by Maestro Max, students can work their way through the 48 lessons using a five-line staff and an on-screen piano keyboard. From Lesson 1 (Introducing the Staff) to Lesson 48 (Introduction to Harmony), the animated notes and orchestra music will captivate the learner and encourage music play. Students manipulate notes on the staff and hear the actual sounds those notes make. Successful responses require careful listening skills for students to listen to notes and complete the music tasks. Multiple choice "learning checks" within each lesson use visual feedback to show note placement on the staff or piano keyboard.

Maestro Manager. A student progress screen shows students what they have done and includes high scores for the interactive games that follow every lesson. Maestro Manager allows teachers to create groups, add students and set up a lesson syllabi at the group and student level. Scores can be exported and printed. An Educator's Guide includes a matrix of all lesson content, activity pages to reproduce for use in the classroom and ideas for using the Music Doodle Pad.

The Music Doodle Pad lets students notate familiar tunes or create their own music arrangements. Students can listen to songs from the Jukebox or songs created by other users. There is a Sound Palette of notes and six instruments to use for original song creations. All songs can be saved so that students can practice the skills they are learning.

For additional information, visit www.harmonicvision.com or call 800-474-0903. Upgrades from Music Ace and Music Ace 2 are available for education. Win/Mac, $127.95 stand-alone copy.

Linda K. Lindroth is Technology Editor and Web Coordinator for Teaching Pre K-8. She is also a Technology Resource Teacher in a K-5 computer lab in Lexington, KY.