Sepia: Comparing Photos of Places from Then and Now

Sepia Town is a website that allows you to compare historical photographs from selected major cities (see below).

Basically, you click on a city. Then you zoom in to see thumbnails of the photographs. Once you choose a photograph, click "Then/Now" button to see a side by side comparison of the present day photo to the historical one. In addition, users can upload their own historical photos to the site. While there are limited cities right now, I would imagine this site would grow over time so check back often.

Vi.sualize.us to bookmark images

Thanks to Hillary Andrlik's post on The Teaching Palette blog, I now have a favorite web 2.0 tool. Go to her post for a detailed description.

Basically, my new find thanks to Ms. Andrlik, is a site called Vi.sualize.us, which is similar to delicious.com. Vi.sualize.us lets the user bookmark and share images that you find on the web instead of websites. As Hillary mentions, this is great alternative to saving images on your computer and filling up its hard drive. I just signed up for an account and can't wait to try it. I'll post again later in the month when I have had time to review it.

History in Pictures

The American Image: The Photographs of John Collier Jr. is a site where you can see how photographs have changed since the 1940s. Also users can create their own propaganda to study how propaganda is used in the public within this site.


Picturing the Century is sponsored by the National Archives and spans over 100 years in history. In addition to browsing the pictures online, you can order reprints from their catalog.


The Way We Worked: a site that documents in photographs how the workplace has changed since the 19th century. Pictures of how we worked, where we worked, what we wore to work, dangers at work, and more are displayed.



Life Magazine: Photographs show current issues as well as historical events.

Photovisi: Create your own desktop collages!

Photovisi is a website where you can upload photos from your computer or import them from Flickr to create your own personalized photo collages for your desktop. There is no need to create an account or login to the site to use their services. They do not store your photos in their site. Just upload anywhere between 1 - 30 photos, choose your template, and Photovisi does the rest. Download your creation in three standard desktop wallpaper sizes, apply to your desktop, and you're done! Impress your friends! Now teachers can quickly showcase pictures from a field trip or special event.

Biology Resources for Teachers

ARKive

ARKive's mission is to bring together the best photographs and video footage of threatened species around the world in hopes of having a concise, organized database of these organisms. They partnered with some of the best wildlife photographers in the world so that teachers, students, and the general public may learn more about these threatened species and act to save them. You can search for species by their classification (mammal, amphibian, insect, plant, etc), and each threatened species you click on provides detailed information about that species.

There is also an educator section of ARKive, which I was pleasantly surprised to see has FREE multimedia resources on topics such as: plant life cycles, adaptations, food chains and webs, habitats, ecosystems, predator and prey, natural selection, and much more. The resources are PowerPoint presentations with embedded videos on the topic. This is truly a worthwhile site!

Biology in Motion

Biology in Motion is is a site dedicated to providing short animations to explain biology concepts such as: enzyme characteristics and intestinal gas. In addition, there are several interactive activities and simulations that give students practice with concepts like: Meiosis, Mitosis, evolution, digestion, enery, cell division, and the cardiovascular system. While this site is not as extensive as ARKive, it is a helpful supplemental site if you are teaching one of these concepts.

Image Blender Software by Tech4Learning

Image Blender is one of many programs offered through Tech4Learning. Image Blender is a digital photo editor that allows you to combine layers and different photos, text objects, shapes, and special effects to create new images. By utilizing their "cool word" feature, students can place an image in the background and type text over it. The result is the image shows through the text, creating a "cool word" (see example in slideshow). Cool words would be great for visual learners studying vocabulary. For example, if a child is learning the differences between sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rock, why not put images behind the vocab words to help the student make a visual connection?

Teachers who work on their school yearbook also find Image Blender helpful for editing pictures and creating interesting effects before publication.
BubbleShare: Share photos - Easy Photo Sharing

Create Picture Cards Fast and Easy

Mrs. Riley's site called "It's in the cards" is a new online program still in Beta that lets users create picture cards. For special education teachers who are familar with Boardmaker, Mrs. Riley's site is easy and free. You can try the program without an account, but you'll need to register if you want to save or print the cards. In addition, you can keep the cards that you have saved as "public" or "private". Why reinvent the wheel if you can use someone else's cards that are stored on the site, right? For now, this site is free, but in the future it may be a paid site once they have a faithful following. However, if they keep their prices lower than Boardmaker, they may be able to keep their followers.

FotoViewr: Embed your Flickr photos into your blog!

FotoViewr - Create your 3D photo gallery

FotoViewr is a cool new site that I came across today that allows you to access your photos from your Flickr or SmugMug account, create a slideshow, and embed it into your blog or website. Why do I like FotoViewr?

1. You don’t need to sign up or create an account to use the site.
2. Easily access your photos by entering your username and the “tag” of the photos you wish to view.
3. Pick a “gallery” tool to showcase your photos.
4. Embed the slideshow using the code Fotoviewr provides for you. The transitions remind me of PicLens (otherwise known as Cool Iris), which is a new way to search for multimedia on the web. The effects are very similar to what I see in FotoViewr. If you can’t see the slideshow below, try viewing this blog in Firefox instead of Internet Explorer.
   
   

Pixlr: Online Photo Editor FREE!

Often teachers come to me and ask for a way to resize their pictures at school. Luckily, teachers have access to Image Blender, a photo editor by Tech4learning that allows them to do this, but they only have access to it in the computer lab unless they take advantage of "work-at-home" rights for this software. If teachers want to resize or edit digital pictures from the comfort of their own home or classroom, Pixlr is a great option for them.

There are several online photo editors. What makes Pixlr so special? It’s one of the only free photo editor that allows you to resize pictures in pixels. This is incredibly handy if you are trying to find a picture to fix exact pixel sizes for avatars or icons on websites. Pixlr was created for non-professionals and has many features including: resizing, cropping, layers, filters, etc. When you are finished with your picture, you have the option to save in JPG or PNG format.

Kitzu offers multimedia options for teachers and students

Kitzu is my newest find! I mentioned it briefly in an earlier post, but I finally had a chance to look at it this weekend. Kitzu offers free, copyright-friendly, and educational media packages for teachers and students to use in multimedia projects. Most packages include about six pieces of media around an educational theme from the 21st century that can include images, documents, audio clips, video clips, and illustrations. As a teacher, download one of these kits to use with your whole class. You will be amazed that each student uses the media differently to create a unique project. For teachers who do not know where to start, Kitzu is the perfect first step for integrating with PowerPoint, Photo Story, Movie Maker, or Adobe Premier Elements.

MD, VA, DC Day of Discovery

On Wednesday, August 13, 2008 I traveled to Silver Spring, MD for “The Day of Discovery” at the Discovery Communications Headquarters. In addition to breakfast, lunch, and wonderful door prizes, we were treated to two keynote sessions and three break out sessions that taught us how to incorporate “Discovery Streaming,” a paid subscription to a site that is packed with educational multimedia for teachers to use.

Scott Kinney presented on “The Media Evolution”. He supported the idea that media should be incorportated into the classroom as an instructional aid since 8-18 year old children spend 6 1/2 hours a day with media of some kind. Many teachers do not realize all of the skills that are needed to create media for school projects: researching, locate and gather resources, prewriting, writing, editing, storyboarding, and reading fluency skills.

Hall Davidson, Director of the Discovery Educator Network, presented on “Digital Media with Students in the Classroom.” He discussed scaffolding the use of digital media in student projects until students are comfortable with the skills. For example,

1. Begin with creating PowerPoint presentations and embed videos from Discovery Streaming.
2. Create slideshows from your digital images in Photo Story.
3. Create videos and movies with narration in Movie Maker.
4. Finally, create movies in Adobe Premier Elements and introduce chromakey skills to the kids.

In addition, Mr. Davidson told us about Kitzu, a website of resources for digital media for student projects and Jakesonline, a site of wonderful tutorials to get you started.

Matt Monjan presented “50 Ways to Integrate DE Streaming”. While most of this was a review since I saw matt speak a few times before, I still learned a few new tricks. For example, I discovered that you can now insert embeddable code, or widgets, into DS’s writing prompts and you can add more than one image. Also, if you search “AFI” in Discovery Streaming, you will find several film making video resources to use with your students.

Hall Davidson also presented on “Teaching with Cell Phones”. I spent most of the time on my phone so I forgot to write most of it down. However, I learned that you can podcast directly from your cellphone using Gcast.com. You can also upload video directly into YouTube from your cell phone. And did you know that you can take a poll from your phone using text massaging and see the results live on polleverywhere.com? I tried this out - SO COOL. Or try this one - if you send a text message that includes a fast food restaurant and a menu item to 34381 you will receive a message with all of the nutritional information about that food item. For example, text “McDonald’s Big Mac” to 34381, it will tell you how many grams of fat you are about to enjoy.
Dennis Swain presented “Embedding Multimedia: PowerPoint Presentations that Pop!” While I knew that we could embed videos and hyperlink to videos, I didn’t realize you could embed videos and still have all of the controls of Windows Media Player available (play, rewind, fast forward, etc). To do this, open PowerPoint and go to a slide.

1. Click the “View” button on the top toolbar.
2. Click “Toobars” and “Control Tool Box”.
3. Click on the “hammer” button.
4. Scroll to “Windows Media Player” and select it.
5. Crosshairs will appear. Draw a box on the slide where you want the video to appear.
6. Right-click the box. Choose “properties”.
7. Click on the three dots on the box. (…)
8. Browse to where your downloaded movie is on your computer. Select it.
9. Under “playback options”, uncheck “auto start” and check “stretch to fit.”
10. Click OK.
11. Now you will see the embedded video with the Media Player controls. While the video is playing, you can right-click the video and choose “Zoom” and “Full screen”. Ta-Dah!

Thank you, Discovery Education!

RELATED POST:

Photostory Quick Tip: Saving as a Project vs. Saving as Final Movie

Says-it.com provides harmless fun

Do you like to personalize pictures to make them look real but don’t have time to dabble in Photoshop? Have no fear! Check out says-it.com. They have many different generators where you can personalize the information printed on them. Personalize a church sign, a McDonald’s sign, or a Danger sign. Add a little spice to your webpage or your blog. I’m easily amused, but if you’re reading this blog, you probably are, too.

National Geographic Photography

Check out National Geographic’s Photography gallery! For educators looking for math connections, look at the subcategory called “Patterns in Nature”. Real-life connections with patterning and symmetry can be used with these beautiful photos.