Technology in the Art Classroom?

[macberly m]

The art department in my school district is up for text book adoption and the money we are using would be best served to add more technology to our curriculum. Does anyone out there teach art? If so I need some ideas for brands of projectors so that instead of gathering 20+ students around one computer for demonstrations on PhotoShop etc that I can project the demo on a screen for the entire class. Also we are interested in some sort of opaque projector that would allow us to project hand made project demo's onto the screen so all students can better see (i.e. demonstrating shading techniques, How to use a graph, etc). I usually gather them around one work space but it is difficult for all of them to see at once. Any help would be greatly appreciated. With so many kinds of digital projectors and other forms of technology out there it is difficult to know what works best. Any Art Teachers out there with tech in their rooms? What do you suggest/recommend?

[gr8rt1]

smart boards are great, and i have seen something called an elmo which is a like a video camera that points down at the table top and has such good magnification that you can put books under it and read them from the back of the class. imagine being able to demo shading, origami, macrame to the whole class.

btw technology and texbooks probably come from separate budgets, so if you're adopting, look for series that offers the most technology tie-ins/support