Pinwords

Pinwords is a pretty cool site that I learned about from Larry Ferlazzo's blog where you upload a picture or grab one from a URL and then add some fancy print using their preset font layouts.  Simple enough right?  You can then save the picture or share it socially using Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc.  Check out the picture below that I created using Pinwords.

Now What?

Pinwords is a great site for creating image slides for use in a digital story.  The captions are laid out cleanly on the page and are easily read.  It's kind of like Haiku Deck one slide at a time.

Image Quiz

ImageQuiz is a new site in beta which allows users to create quizzes using images .  In order to answer each question you must click on the correct spot in the image.  Images can be uploaded or linked by URL.  If you have access to image editing software the possibilities are endless.

Some ideas for using this site:

• identify objects in a pictures (foreign language)
• places on a map (geography)
• parts of the body (health)

To see it in action try this quiz about New York.

Now What?

I really like that this site is fast and easy to use.  The interface leaves a little to be desired as it doesn't have much in the way of aesthetics but it gets the job done.  Have your students record their scores and times and see who can answer the most questions in the smallest amount of time.

Google Life Archive

Every day students are asked to include images in their projects and presentations without much advice on where they should search for those images or how they should use them once they are found.  Generally, students will head to Google or Yahoo and grab the first one that pops up in their search.  With that being said, "copyright" (and plagiarism for that matter) seems to be a word that most students don't fully understand.  One way to encourage digital citizenship and appropriate use is to provide sites for students to use when searching for images.  Recently, I happened upon an excellent resource for historical images from Life magazine.  Using a custom Google search you can now look through the decades worth of images from Life magazine right on the web in the Google Life Archive.  The Google Life Archive has great pictures broken out by decade as well as event and all images are public domain so they can be used without copyright issue.

Now What?

Images are powerful and students love to include them in their work but without a little guidance it can be a messy situation.  Another great place for students to look for images is using the creative commons search site which links to multiple search engines for images and more.

Phrase.it

Phrase.it is a really basic service where you can upload a picture and add cartoon style thought bubbles.  Phrase.it is a really simple idea but there are a lot of possibilities for using it in your classroom or a website.  Aside from the speech bubbles you can also add one of four different filter effects to the image as well.  Phrase.it is very easy to use and you do not need an account to create or save your image.

Now What?

I would say that Phrase.it is somewhere between clipart (static image) and Thinglink (which is completely interactive).  Teachers can use this in the classroom to have students create short stories with speech bubbles but also this could be a great quick homework assignment where students have to develop meaningful text based on a picture which could be very high level activity depending on the image.

H/T to Free Technology 4 Teachers

GIF Pal

We've all seen them...some are annoying but some are absolutely awesome.  Animated GIFs recently celebrated their 25th birthday and they are still going strong.  Teachers are one of the biggest consumers of animated GIFs, mostly on their webpages.  There are animated GIFs for just about every subject and content area.  Now you can even create your own animated images without any prior graphic design experience!  GIF Pal is a great website that is easy to use and free.  Create a GIF to demonstrate PEMDAS, how about a GIF depicting the progression of battles during the Civil War, cell mitosis or the creation of secondary colors.  With a little creativity and the ability to snap a screen shot of your computer, you can do just about anything!

Now What?

Teachers are always looking for more engaging ways to present content to their students (and have their students present content to the class).  GIF Pal is another tool you can add to your bag of tricks to make things a bit more interesting.  Other great sites for animating images are Thing Link, Speaking Images, and Blabberize.

Ten by Ten: Current Events in Pictures

Ten by Ten is a neat website that I discovered on Free Tech 4 Teachers that links images with the top 100 news stories from around the world in the past hour.  The images/stories on Ten by Ten are also ranked by popularity and provide information and links when clicked.  In order for this information to pop-up be sure to allow pop-ups from this site.

Now What?


When I was teaching social studies there were times when we didn't have enough time to move to our next destination but we had a few minute left in class.  Ten by Ten would be an excellent way to use those few minutes productively to discover what is trending in the news around the globe.

Dumpr

Looking for a fun site to use for image editing?  I recently stumbled onto Dumpr and found it very easy to use and home to some new image effects that I haven't see on other sites.  Simply choose an effect such as photo to sketch, rubik's cube, or photo inside of a photo (among others) and then upload your image to see the effect applied.  I really like that you only have to choose an effect and then upload your picture without having to fuss with settings and other options.  In order to share your photos, you will need to create a free account which gives you the ability to save and share socially.  Check out this cool effect that I used below called sketch artist.



Dumpr - Photo Fun

While on the site, I also noticed this awesome app that they have created called Group Shot which allows you to take several photos and pick parts of each to include in the final copy.  For quick overview check out the video below:




Now What?

Dumpr could be an excellent site for teachers looking to use photos in an interesting way in their classroom or students using photos for a project in class.  For more sites like this check out my page of image creation and editing websites.

iPiccy

iPiccy is a photo editor that reminds me a lot of the now defunct Picnik which I really enjoyed.  Some of the highlights of iPiccy are that it is free and web based.  Also, iPiccy has lots of great tools to use that are all free (unlike Picnik which has premium tools for paid users).  Something unique about iPiccy is that in addition to editing photos you can also use their paint feature or create a collage from lots of photos.  The app also supports layers so you can create a file which has multiple images including text and then merge the layers into one image.  The best part of iPiccy is that it is super easy to use.  Check out the interface below...

Now What?

iPiccy is a great site for all of your basic (and advanced) photo editing needs.  I can definitely see this being used as an introduction for some of the more confusing image editing programs like Photoshop and fireworks.  The fact that it has an image painter tool means that you can have your students even create their own images for their projects and homework.

ThingLink

ThingLink is a site where you can take an ordinary static image and add some interactivity and multimedia to enhance it.  Using ThingLink is a great way to encourage students to think outside of the box for a presentation or when creating a study guide for an upcoming test or quiz.  Last week I wrote about ThingLink and created an assignment for teachers to use in my Weekly Technology Assignment and it has been very well received by teachers and students.  I recently went into a psychology classroom and helped students to create their  ThingLink image for a study review of different aspects of their unit.  Excellent lesson!  Check out the video tutorial below for an overview of ThingLink and how you can use it to create your very own interactive infographic.

Cool Text

Cool Text is a graphic generator website where you can make cool text graphics or buttons for use on your blog or class project.  I have used Cool Text in the past with students creating websites but also for class projects such as digital storytelling where the students want to create their own cool title.  The graphics on Cool Text can be customized and downloaded for unlimited use or you can create an account and save your images on their server.  Below is an example of a graphic I created using "iText".

Now What?

Add this site to your class links so that students can access it while working from home and at school.  Ask them to create their own cool title graphic for their next paper or lab report.  Without registration or an account it is quick and easy to use.