I am impressed with the many things that can be done to a photo using the free tools out on the web! Of course Flickr offers Picnik as a way to edit and enhance photos as well as adding fun and unique effects. Students would love changing photos taken or found and adding effects and text to create images to be used in projects. I added a speech balloon with text to this photo using Picnik. Students can create comics/cartoons using this toolA project that I have had students do in the past is to create a "Wall of Fame" for Black History Month. I have students do reports on an African-American man or woman and then trace an image of that person's head to create a silhouette. The silhouette and report are then displayed down the hallway for a dramatic "African-American History Wall of Fame." Parents and students love this. After browsing the Picnik site, I ran across this YouTube video on making silhouettes from images/photos found. It might be a great way to implement this technology tool into this project!
Other photo editing apps:
I really liked BigHugeLabs. One of the tools allows the user to create a Movie Poster. I can see my students using this application to create posters for book reports, author studies (Students create a poster about an author.), during Women's History Month in March, students could create a poster about a famous woman in history. I created this image using the Movie Poster tool in BigHugeLabs.
Another tool from BigHugeLabs lets you create a Magazine Cover. Like the Movie Poster, this could be used by students to create covers for any subject being studied.Not only are photo editing tools great for classroom use, I believe photo editing can be easily used for personal use! Creating invitations for birthday parties, images to be used in scrapbooking, calendars, etc...again, so many possibilities!
Again, some very good ideas for implementation of this Thing. The big problem for many teachers is having access to the computer lab for students to work on their projects. Is that a problem at your school?
ReplyDeleteI can see this being an issue at times. Right now our teachers from K-5 have a "reserved time" in the computer lab in which we are to utilize and implement technology into our curriculums. Grades 6-8 also use the computer lab at least twice a week in which the computer teacher is more than willing to help those students implement the technology that the regular classroom teachers want to be used in projects assigned. It really has not been a problem for us at Saint Charles so far...if the lab is needed, our teachers are pretty flexible and willing to work with each other. I guess that is an advantage of being at a smaller school? Who knows though, with all of these great ideas we are getting from taking the "Thing" classes, it may become more of an issue. :)
ReplyDeleteI loved exploring Dumpr and BigHugeLabs. The students will love doing projects using these photo-editing tools. You have some great ideas: I look forward to seeing them.
ReplyDeleteWow! Your creations in dumper were really good. It is great to know that we can all use this technology in our school. Maybe we could eventually use some of the photos we edit and use them to enhance our yearbook or even the school newpaper that you work on with your students.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Kristine. I hadn't even thought about using this tool for the student newspaper. I'll have to see about implementing it!
ReplyDelete