Richard D. Solomon's Blog on Mentoring Jewish Students and Teachers: How WaterMark.ws, a web tool that enables users to watermark their images, can be utilized to promote Judaic instruction and to mentor/train Jewish educators

Monday, April 6, 2015

How WaterMark.ws, a web tool that enables users to watermark their images, can be utilized to promote Judaic instruction and to mentor/train Jewish educators

When mentoring our pre-service and in-service teachers we need to describe and model both research-based and clinically tested best practices, and demonstrate how these best practices can be applied in the real (i.e. physical) and virtual (i.e. online) classroom for both teaching and teacher training. The combination of face to face instruction in a physical setting and online learning is called blended learning. In this section of the blog we will describe how the internet can serve as a supplemental resource for instruction and the mentoring of pre-service and in-service Jewish educators. In this post we will discuss how WaterMark.ws, a web tool that enables users to watermark their images, can be used to promote Judaic instruction and to mentor/train Jewish educators.

According to WaterMark.ws this web tool allows the user “ to watermark … photos online. It offers features like batch processing, resizing, image compression, text and image watermarking….”

What is the Rationale for Watermarking Your Images?

To let others know that you own a particular image or picture
To place your specific information on an image (e.g. name, email, website, logo, etc.)

Note: Even though you place a watermark or copyright symbol on an image that you own, this does not guarantee that someone will not erase your watermark of copyright symbol and thus copy your image.

Below you will find additional web resources for watermarking your image:

Assumption: The teacher or mentor teacher has an interactive white board (i.e. SMART Board, Promethean, etc.), a Tablet PC (also called a Slate or Blade), a computer presenter or computer with internet access attached to an LCD projector in the classroom. It would be ideal if students or mentees had access to their own laptop computers or IPads. Given parental and school approval, and the development of specific guidelines, smartphones can be used to enhance instruction as well.

Note: Although WaterMark.ws can be applied in the Judaic Studies blended learning classroom, it can be also be used for training pre-service and in-service Jewish educators for professional or staff development. It is our hope that Jewish educators around the globe will form an online community of practice, a CoP, a group of people who share an interest, a craft, and/or a profession, to enhance the delivery of instruction and training of Jewish educators. For example, here is a CoP you might want to join.

Note: can be used in a face to face and virtual classroom.

What is WaterMark.ws ?

WaterMark.ws is a web tool that enables the use to create computer avatar. See the definition and explanation of a computer avatar above.

How WaterMark.ws, a web tool that enables users to watermark their images, can be utilized to promote Judaic instruction and to mentor/train Jewish educators

Click on the links below and find resources explaining how WaterMark.ws can be used to promote Judaic instruction and to train/mentor pre-service and in-service Jewish educators:

More specifically, below you will find the original image of me.