Thursday, November 12, 2009

How about planning a digital trip in class? With Google Earth we can talk about cities and we can actually go there! I'm sure students will benefit from getting to know where the cities are before they talk about them. I used one of my favorite tools and planned an information gap activity. Student A listens to a couple planning a day in Jerusalem... Student B goes to Hawaii... Students share and plan a day in a city of their choice or compare the two places. How would you use Google Earth in class?

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Fun Photo Editing Sites

This directory of amazing sites for photo editing - 28 Online Photo Editing Websites to Have Fun With - was shared with me by a dear online friend who lives in Argentina. First, it shows the power of our online communities. Jennifer Verschoor has kindly shared this link because she knew I was into working with images.

I just picked one of the sites, befunky, and tested it. What I loved about befunky is the fact that no logins are required and the effects are really cool. Teens would love to play around with their photos in this photo editing space.



Then, if you explore it, you'll see that you can make fun editing in your own photos to add them to your school digital resources, to enliven classes. Most important of all, you could try out some of those sites to make your classes even more student-centered by

  • encouraging your students to remix their photos and tell a story.

  • sharing their best remixes and have a class vote

  • having students choose a topic, take a photo and edit the photo with text

  • students sharing their photos remix and the others asking questions about them.

  • encouraging students to remix a photo to match with a reading

  • encouraging a photo remix plus poetry (like in this haiku project)

Another interesting resource for image editing,yearbookyourself, is the one Nik Peachey points out in his blog . Really fun to play around with.

Which tool from these resources would you give it a try and what kind of activities do you picture doing with your students?