One of my, and my students’, favorite projects this past year was a series of activities based on [Mark Guzdial and Barabara Ericson’s](http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/mediaComp-teach) book [Introduction to Computing & Programming with Java: A Multimedia Approach](http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Computing-Programming-Java-Multimedia/dp/0131496980). I read their book over winter break and decided that it would be a great way to get back into the swing of things after break (no pun intended). Before winter break, we made it through arrays and the media computation project was a great review when we came back in January. While the book covers pictures, sound, and movies, we just focused on pictures.

We worked through several activities, focusing on filters and transformations. The students enjoyed seeing that they could write programs that performed some of the same features as Photoshop. The unit concluded with a collage project in which students combined several of their filters and transformations into a final and unique image.

I was extremely pleased to see that [one of the new AP Computer Science labs](https://pedagoguepadawan.net/263/ap-annual-conference-a-first-look-at-the-labs-for-ap-computer-science-a/), Picture Lab, was developed by Barbara Ericson and is based on her book. I think this new lab will bring an authentic and engaging series of activities to a wider audience.

Here are some of the collages that my students created last year.