In the current atmosphere surrounding K-12 edtech tools, one might be forgiven for thinking that any tool without AI is hopelessly obsolete.

Au contraire, mes amis.

There are many advantages to education technology from a simpler time—i.e., the ancient days of the early aughts.

Such advantages include an easier interface, quicker mastery for both teachers and students, zero cost, and no concerns about data privacy. Not to mention 100% hallucination-free learning.

In this article we explore the uses of PIC-LITS, a relatively simple yet powerful tool for teaching literacy.

What is PIC-LITS?

PIC-LITS is a free interactive literacy website that teaches writing by allowing users to easily combine words and pictures. With this engaging blend of the visual and the verbal, PIC-LITS allows students to experiment with sentences, captions, parts of speech, poetry, and much more.

The site provides hundreds of curated photos accompanied by unique word banks. Each word bank is organized by parts of speech: nouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, and universal (prepositions, pronouns, and conjunctions). Users of any age can benefit from PIC-LITS, as exercises can be adapted to individual literacy levels.

How does PIC-LITS Work?

It’s easy to get started using PIC-LITS for both teachers and students. While students can create PIC-LITS without an account, I recommend creating a free account so you can save, edit, and share your creations. Users can quickly sign in with Google or register with their email and create a password.

Choose a Photo

To get started, simply click "Create a PIC-LIT" from the main menu and view the featured photograph with its word bank. To the right, a dropdown menu allows users to select a subject, from "Animals, Pets and Wildlife," to "Weird and Unusual." Photos from the selected topic can now be chosen from the scroll below the menu

To view all photos, click "Choose a Photograph."

Create a PIC-LIT

Two options are available for creating PIC-LITS: Drag-N-Drop and Freestyle.

Drag-N-Drop

With Drag-N-Drop, users simply drag words from the word bank, which is specific to each image. For example, the word bank for the above photo—an ambiguous representation of a backlit man in what appears to a tunnel—includes words such as destination, light, traveler, path. scary, shiny, metal, trap, and forever. Yet there are plenty of less dramatic words as well, including beginning, boring, and patiently.

Freestyle

To create a freestyle PIC-LIT, click the "Go to Freestyle" toggle button to the right of each photo and start typing. Text will appear over the image as it would in a text document, with regular lines and spaces. Although you won't be able to drag and drop the text, you can still move text around via the space bar and enter key.

Editing Your PIC-LITS

Editing PIC-LITS is as easy as everything else on the site. Simply go to “My PIC-LITS" and select the PIC-LIT to be edited. Click the edit pencil to view the alternative versions of any word, and select the desired one. To delete a word, just drag it off the image and it disappears.

Each PIC-LIT can be shared via email or Facebook, downloaded as a jpeg file, or printed, if desired.

What are the Best PIC-LITS Features?

LESSON PLANS

The PIC-LITS site makes it easy for teachers to incorporate PIC-LITS into their language arts lessons. Dozens of lesson plans are organized according to types of PIC-LITS, poetry, or parts of speech. Each lesson includes an objective, example PIC-LITS, writing prompts, and examples of correct and incorrect usage.

FEATURED PIC-LITS

When you or your students feel uninspired or are lacking imagination, that’s when the Featured PIC-LITS shine. Browse the gallery to be inspired by diverse images—everything from sunglasses in the snow to camels in the desert—accompanied by equally diverse texts. Just about any idea can be amplified or illuminated using the basic PIC-LITS platform.

VIDEO TUTORIAL

PIC-LIT's tutorial provides quick and clear instructions for anyone using the site, whether student or teacher.

Does PIC-LITS Employ Artificial Intelligence?

Nope! PIC-LITS relies on 100% natural intelligence supplied by site founder Terry Friedlander, his staff, and—of course—teachers, students, and other users.

What's more, PIC-LITS assignments are reasonably immune to cheating with AI. In many cases, there is no "right" answer, as the answers depend on student creativity. In others—such as grammar exercises—the framework provided by the word bank helps to guide students to complete their own work without revealing the correct answers.

In other words, exercises are structured so that kids are encouraged to keep at it on their own.

Is PIC-LITS safe for kids?

All PIC-LITS content is screened and selected by the PIC-LITS photo editor. Additionally, users' email addresses are not shared with third parties.

How Much Does PIC-LITS Cost?

PIC-LITS is 100% free. However, users with excess cash may consider purchasing the amusing and unique PIC-LITS tee shirts and hats available in the site shop.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers

Digital image libraries are essential to today’s teachers and students. Yet while stock image sites such as Shutterstock, iStock, and Getty Images offer an impressive selection of high-quality images and vector illustrations, these sites are typically beyond the budget of most school districts.

Fortunately, the image and clip art sites below provide an extensive supply of moderate- to high-quality visuals for cost-conscious schools. Most of these sites are completely free, and most have a clear license/FAQ page explaining what uses are allowed or prohibited.

Best Image and Clip Art Sites for Education

Freerange

Freerange boasts a stylish easy-to-navigate website with thousands of free high-quality images. Users can search easily by category or keyword, and filter by specific license and popularity. Download options include three sizes. Bonus- users can “download” directly to PIXLR for editing. While photos are tastefully and artistically composed, a few do include mild-moderate nudity. All photos and illustrations are licensed for commercial use, with details provided. Account required.

PROS:

• Clear Licensing Information and credit text provided
• Search by category, keyword, license type, recency and popularity
• High-quality photos and illustrations
• Three sizes available for download
• Users may share directly from image page to social media and email
• Users can contribute images

CONS:

• Occasional mild-moderate nudity may be considered inappropriate

Free Images

One of the oldest and largest free image sites, Free Images was founded as Stock.xchng in 2001. Over the next 20 years, the site merged with several free illustration sites and was renamed Free Images. Available in more than a dozen languages, the site is a repository for thousands of free photos, vector images, clipart, and editable Photoshop templates as well as icons. The robust selection of free downloads is supplemented by AI-generated images and content from the paid site iStock. No account is required, but each download is delayed for six seconds in order to show users an iStock advertisement/promo code.

PROS:

• 16 languages available
• Photos, vector images, clip art, icons, and editable Photoshop files
• Search by categories and themes
• Very good image quality
• Download size options
• Attribution clarity
• No account required

CONS:

• Paid images from iStock sprinkled in free results
• Download delay due to ads

Pics4Learning

A safe, curated image library for classroom assignments, school websites, or any education-related project, Pics4Learning provides a diverse spectrum of images in subjects ranging from American Sign Language to fractals to weather. Contribute your own JPEG or PNG images. Fully free, no account required.

PROS:

• Thousands of images curated for students
• Search by keyword, themes and collections
• Download as .jpg or save directly to Google Drive
• Citation for each image provided
• Users can contribute their own images

CONS:

• While image quality is at least adequate, there are fewer high-quality, professional-style photos compared to other sites

Pixabay

In just 15 short years, Pixabay has grown to be one of the best-known and most comprehensive free image sharing sites. Here visitors can explore and download collections of photos, illustrations, vector images, videos, and even music. All are free to download and free to use under the Pixabay license, which is a modified Creative Commons CC0 license. Pixabay shines in another way as well—its blogs and forums keep users apprised of the latest news and tips to make the most of the site.

PROS:

• Extensive collections of quality free images, videos, music, sound effects, and gifs in a wide range of categories
• Search by content type, orientation, size, color, date of publication, AI-generation, popularity
• Clear summary of license dos and don'ts
• Users can contribute their own content
• User forums allow discussions about site practices as well as artistic techniques

CONS:

• Quality varies, as is true for all free image sites

Photos For Class

From a partnership between Storyboard That and Pixabay, this education-focused image site allows teachers and students to download high-quality Creative Commons photos for school assignments. The main advantage of Photos for Class is that its curation process ensures that all images are appropriate for kids. However, no categories are listed for easy browsing and the search feature is limited, allowing only free text and voice search.

PROS:

• Four-step filtering process ensures that all images are appropriate for kids
• Downloaded images automatically cite author and image license terms
• Voice search
• No account required

CONS:

• Limited search capabilities
• No category list for browsing

Pexels

A top resource not only for free stock images, but also free stock videos. Pexels hosts photo and video challenges for multiple categories, with professional photography equipment awarded to winners. While you’ll find many high-quality images and videos on Pexels, there’s no category list or dedicated color search, so finding a specific image may take longer. No account is required, but create a free account to collect your favorites and contribute your own images and videos. Currently, 28 languages are supported.

PROS:

• Search by keyword, orientation, size, color, popularity, user, or upload date
• License rules clearly explained
• 28 languages supported
• User challenges

CONS:

• No comprehensive category list for browsing

Freepik

With photos, vector images, Photoshop (PSD) files, customizable icons, easy-to-edit illustrations, and an online template editor, Freepik is a one-stop shop for free images and image tools. Freepik's, freemium model provides a generous selection of high quality free content, although free users are limited to ten daily downloads.

PROS:

• Easy sign in with Google, Apple, or email.
• High-quality photos, vectors, illustrations, 3D models, video snippets, and more
• Filters let users search by keywords, free or premium, orientation, color, AII-generated, file type, popularity, and more
• Built-in editing tools for images and videos.

CONS:

• Free plan limited to 10 downloads daily.
• No access to premium images with free plan
• Attribution required for free downloads.

Unsplash

Thousands of free sometimes ordinary—but often eye-popping—images include categories such as nature, current events, technology, and many more suitable for education use. Most are free to download and use according to the Unsplash License, with the exception of premium (Unsplash+) content. A fun feature for contributors is the “Made With Unsplash” page, which showcases creative remixes of its images. Unsplash provides strong support for its contributors, so it's a great place for young photographers to get started sharing their work.

PROS:

• Many interesting, unusual, and stylish images to choose from
• Search by keyword or image
• Four download sizes
• Users can upload their own work
• Clear rules for licenses and attribution
• No account required

CONS:

• Premium content mixed with free content in searches
• Lacks comprehensive category list for browsing

Kaboompics

A professional-looking site featuring free high-quality photos in diverse categories, from lifestyle to technology to healthcare. Users can search by category, color of the spectrum and image orientation. A nifty perk is that each photo includes a free downloadable complementary colors palette. No account required.

PROS:

• Each image includes a specific color palette with color hex codes
• Custom size and orientation downloads
• Search by keyword, category, color, recency, or popularity
• Photoshoots are a great way to explore a theme
• Clear license and attribution rules

CONS:

• Sometimes tricky to distinguish premium photo blocks from free content
• "View more" button links to paid image site

NegativeSpace

A stylish and professional-looking site offering a wide variety of free, high-resolution Creative Commons CC0 photographs as well as free virtual backgrounds for videoconferencing and remote teaching. More than two dozen categories are available, from Abstract to Virtual Backgrounds. Search by category, hashtag and color. Be sure to check out the awesome outer space photos! No account required.

PROS:

• Easy to navigate interface
• Browse two dozen categories

CONS:

• Keyword search is somewhat unreliable
• No choice of download size

Gratisography

Gratisography is a great resource for creative and quirky stock photos and vector images. It's not only fun to browse, but also provides a clear, plain-language explanation of what users can and can’t do with the photos. Search by topic or browse categories including nature, food, urban and more. Collections range from “AI Generated” to “Artsy Architecture" to “Goofy Grownups” to “Hijinks Hands.” Although the site is heavy on whimsy, it’s not light on quality -- vectors and images appear to be professionally composed and executed.

PROS:

• Unusual, uncommon, and amusing high-quality images
• Search by keyword or browse categories and collections
• Clear license terms
• No account required

CONS:

• No attribution provided for images
• AI-generated images are not always labeled as such

Flickr Commons: The Commons

The Commons, from the photo-sharing site Flickr, serves as a free catalog of the world’s public photos with no known copyright restrictions, contributed by dozens of government and academic bodies. Comments from Flickr members provide context and additional information for many images. Search by subject, color, black and white, or seven different license options. Safe search option available.

PROS:

• Search by keyword, license, color, pattern, Flickr members, and themed groups
• Safe search available
• Users can contribute their own content
• Wide variety of image download sizes
• Great for historical images

CONS:

• Because contributors may disable downloading, not all images can be used
• License terms not always clear
• Account required
• Relatively high percentage of older content of varied quality

Vector Characters

A relatively simple site, Vector Characters focuses on character-based vector art in categories such as man, woman, child, robot, etc. For adding a touch of whimsy or humor to any school project, check out the Fruit Vector, Monster Vector, and Animal Vector categories. Free and premium content. Find free content by entering "free" in the search box.

PROS:

• No account required
• Hundreds of free vector images.
• Browse by category or character type.
• Informative blog posts

CONS:

• Limited search options
• No photos or other types of illustrations

Polypad is an award-winning digital math playground. Its virtual interactive whiteboard incorporates shapes, colors, graphs, music, and other tools to teach geometry, algebra, probability, and statistics to middle and high school students.

The highly structured yet simultaneously free-form design of Polypad encourages students to explore on their own, while allowing educators a broad ability to customize lessons.

Originally created by the founders of Mathigon, Polypad was acquired by Amplify in 2021.

What is Polypad?

Polypad is a powerful virtual manipulative website for mathematics, designed for middle and high school students. Requiring no login or installation, Polypad runs on all devices and browsers.

With its clever drag-n-drop interface, multimedia tools, and colorful manipulatives, it’s sure to engage even the most reluctant math learners.

How does Polypad Work?

Students and teachers can immediately start using Polypad without creating an account. However, creating a free account allows saving and sharing with others, and is therefore ideal.

Teachers can create their free account easily via email, Google, Amplify, or Desmos Classroom account. Student account creation is similar to teachers, with the exception of kids younger than 13. Teachers can welcome these younger students to the platform by creating a free account in Desmos Classroom as described in student account creation.

The Polypad welcome screen highlights several interesting features, such as winners of the 2024 Polypad Art and Music Contest and testimonials from teachers and students. But if you’re ready to start exploring, simply click the Launch Polypad button. Or, to learn more about each of the tools, click Tutorials, through which teachers can discover how to customize, assign, and share Polypad activities with students.

Polypad boasts a remarkably clean, user-friendly interface and easy navigation, with an integrated help menu that makes it super simple to learn about every tool.

When you first open Polypad, you’re greeted by a blank virtual whiteboard with a bottom toolbar, side toolbar, and top left main menu. Click on any left menu element to expand its contents, view tooltips, or the help menu entry for that tool. To use any element, simply drag it to the whiteboard, where the intuitive toolbars allow you to easily change colors, draw, add equations, text and images or export as a png, jpeg, or svg image.

The core functions of Polypad are housed in the Tiles menu, where users will find a wide variety of interactive math tools, in the categories of: geometry; numbers; fractions; algebra; probability and data; and games and applications.

Using Activity Builder with Polypad

Polypad can be used as a stand-alone tool or as a collection of assignable activities and lessons. Amplify's Desmos Classroom Activity Builder allows educators to create multimedia assignable activities using a wide variety of tools for text, image creation, assessment, free response, and of course, Polypad.

To build custom teaching activities, visit https://teacher.desmos.com, create your free Desmos Classroom teacher account, or log in to your existing account. Then navigate to Desmos Activity Builder. In the left menu, click Custom Activities>>Create a New Activity. Name your new activity, select the viewing option (link or private), and briefly describe the activity. These attributes can be easily edited later, so feel free to use placeholder text until you’re ready to share or assign the activity.

Now select Polypad (and/or other elements) from the left menu to build your activity. When you drag the Polypad icon into the activity window, you’ve actually imported the entire Polypad functionality, allowing you to incorporate any of its tools into your lesson.

What are the Best Polypad Features?

Polypad Tutorials

Mathigon's YouTube channel hosts Polypad tutorials that offer step-by-step guidance from the Polypad team on using its tools. Exploring on your own, you might miss the hidden gem Hand Tiles or the fact that Hand Tiles interact with other tools, such as the Algebra Balance Scale. These video tutorials demonstrate the wide-open possibilities for teaching math with Polypad.

Puzzles, Activities, and Lesson Plans

Polypad's interactive tools are in one sense very simple -- users can start experimenting right away without an extensive how-to. Yet, for teachers who have never used Polypad, it may be a bit overwhelming to contemplate how best to implement them into the curriculum. Fortunately, Polypad's extensive set of pre-designed puzzles, activities, and lesson plans offer expert guidance and ideas for use with students.

Assigning Activities

Once you've created your custom Polypad activity, you're able to assign it to members of your class.

First, create your class by choosing Classes in left menu, then Add New Class. An invite code for students will be automatically generated. If you already have classes in Google Classroom, you can simply import from there.

When you open your activity, click the desired option in the Assign menu.

How Much Does Polypad Cost?

Polypad is fully free. It's also free for teachers and students to create a Desmos Classroom account and use Activity Builder to create, assign or complete activities.

Polypad Best Tips and Tricks

Polypad Games and Applications

Polypad's games and apps include chess, logic and computing, currencies, clocks, dominoes, and—best of all—music. Simply drag the keyboard into the workspace and start playing and recording. Not sure what to do? Open the Music and Sonification Help Menu for guidance on using the tools.

Make Your Shapes Sing

Polypad polygons not only have brilliant colors, but also incorporate musical tones that represent their properties, including vertices, perimeter, area, angles, and fractions.

Ask for Help

The built-in Help menu is fully integrated into the Polypad workspace. Just click the question mark on any tile to instantly view the tile summary, examples and lesson ideas.

Accessibility

For students using adaptive technologies such as screen readers, keyboard shortcuts enable them to fully participate in the lesson.

What's Next for Polypad?

Polypad used to be part of Mathigon.org. Both Mathigon and Desmos Classroom were acquired by Amplify, which is in the process of merging and integrating all three products. Tech & Learning is following the developments and will update readers on the integration of these valuable teaching tools.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers

These top free sites for creating digital art range from simple web apps for preschoolers to sophisticated software for advanced students, educators, and professionals.

While some of these sites and apps for creating digital art can serve as essential tools for in-classroom or online art curricula, all are fun to explore and experiment with. The beauty for students of working digitally is that it allows them to easily create, mix media, and share their work with classmates and family.

Top Free Sites for Creating Digital Art

Autodraw
A delightfully simple site with unexpected AI capability, Autodraw invites the artistically challenged to turn their scribbles into legitimate line drawings created by real artists. Just start a doodle and select from among the predicted drawings. But it’s also great for the more talented among us, who are invited to submit their own artwork for inclusion on the site. The easy-to-navigate website allows users to download creations as png files, as well as share their work via links. No account required–just start creating.

Meta Animated Drawings
An AI demo project that transforms your fixed drawings into animated characters who walk, dance, jump, wave, and generally act a bit crazy, in a fun way. A great way for your students to add a storyline to their original artwork. Save and share as mp4 files.

Inkscape
This complete vector drawing program is fully free and available as a download for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. There’s a bit of a learning curve, but Inkscape provides an extensive video tutorial, complete with timestamps so users can easily view their desired topic. The online Inkscape community is another source of expertise for both new and experienced users. Ideal for advanced art and design students.

Exploring the Creative Process With ‘Live Art’
This art lesson from The New York Times features videos of artists at work, lesson ideas for educators, experimental techniques, and a guide to developing stories and characters. In addition to being free with no account required, all of the linked videos and other resources are also free with no account required (even Facebook video links do not require a login--just close the requested login window to view the video).

Photographing Interesting People in Your Community: A Guide to Taking Portraits
Just about everyone has the ability to take digital images with the ubiquitous cell phone. In this lesson from The New York Times, students will learn the five steps to creating compelling portraits with a camera or cell phone. After reading the article, students can try a digital scavenger hunt through the free NYT articles provided, identifying the techniques as implemented by professional photographers. Free article, no account required; all linked resources are also free.

SculptGL
Remarkable 3D digital sculpting web app that functions through your browser or as a free downloadable program. This full-fledged, powerful software supports 10 languages, file import and export, and allows users to immediately start sculpting, with no account required. Creator Stéphane Ginier provides useful shortcuts, as well as links to YouTube tutorials.

Random Art Prompt Generator for Kids
Sometimes even the most creative among us need inspiration. This easy-to-use website generates prompts to help inspire budding artists. Ideas range from a single word (e.g., gold, electric) to elaborate scenarios (e.g., Create a piece in a Caravaggistic style. Using pale yellow colors, evoke a sense of appreciation and place the subject in Capri). Plenty of prompts for an entire classroom!

ManadalaGaba
You don’t have to be familiar with Eastern religions or the popular drawing game Spirograph to appreciate this quirky design tool, which somehow manages to combine elements of both. The digital geometric drawing board automatically generates reflections of your drawn line, creating magical and perfect symmetry. Designs are exportable as .png images.

Bomomo
Simple and incredibly fun drawing site. By experimenting with their computer mouse, kids learn how the 20 unnamed tools and array of spinning circles can help them create artwork. Caution: slightly addictive.

JacksonPollack.org
A super easy and fascinating digital canvas that lets users immediately start painting à la Jackson Pollack. Created by Greek artist Miltos Manetas, the site includes no instructions, so kids can experiment to discover the rules of painting with a mouse or trackpad. How do users change colors, lines and shapes? Try it and find out.

KRITA
A labor of love, KRITA is a free, open-source digital painting software download for Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux, with a focus on illustration, concept art, matte painting, textures, comics, and animations. This full-fledged, complex digital program provides complete documentation, while a vibrant user community supports sharing and collaboration. Great for advanced art students, educators, and professionals.

Make Beliefs Comix
A comic creation site with a gentle, joyful vibe. Creator Bill Zimmerman packs a lot of resources into the site, including teacher tools and lesson plans, a Coronavirus Comic diary, ESOL/literacy help, special needs sections, and much more. Kids of any artistic talent level will enjoy creating their own comics.

Sketchpad
An impressive free site offering extensive digital tools to create, export, and share digital paintings and drawings. Site visitors can choose from many styles, effects, and gradients, while the User Guide provides clear instructions for creating and managing artwork. All Sketchpad features are fully free when used in the browser window. If you prefer the ability to work offline, a download for Mac and PC is just $4.95.

Toy Theater
Great for kids preK-6, this site’s art section includes a variety of simple art creation tools, including Spiral Art, Animation Station, Cube 3D block play, and many others. Bonus: Toy Theatre’s extensive collection of educational games.

• Best Free AI Image Generators
• What Is Canva And How Does It Work?
• AI Art Generators in The Classroom: What You Need To Know

In the midst of the AI revolution, a single question burned in my brain: Can free AI image generators create a photorealistic image based on the following prompt?

Cat picking daisies

Note that this devilishly difficult task includes three parts, two of which are not particularly difficult: cats and daisies. It is the action that proved difficult.

Nonetheless, the results of our testing were intriguing. Although image quality varied greatly, the range of imaginative responses is encouraging for the use of AI image generators as tools for creative expression. While all images included here are the first iteration, these can be considered a starting point, to which users can apply carefully crafted prompts to shape and edit the results.

Adobe Firefly

To use Adobe Firefly image generator, a free account is required. Provided are four aspect ratios, and dozens of styles, themes, and techniques. Users' free generative credit counts reset each month automatically, albeit with a somewhat complicated scheme for tracking those credits.

RESULTS: You don't want to meet any of these cats in real life.

BING IMAGE CREATOR

This AI image generator automatically detects if you’re signed into a Microsoft account, making it easy to start creating images right away. Start with 100 credits, then apply rewards points accumulated within your MSN account for more. Save, download, or customize your images. The platform applies controls to prevent potentially harmful image generation and includes a modified Bing icon in the bottom left corner of each image to indicate that the image was created using Image Creator.

RESULTS: Perhaps the most realistic set of images was generated by the Bing platform. Not only were the cat faces and flowers highly photo-realistic, but also the action depicted came close to the prompt challenge. To be fair, one must note that by depicting only closeups of cat heads, with no limbs or bodies, Bing narrowed the scope of difficulty. Perhaps this is part of its intelligence!

Craiyon

This relatively spare site is easy to use, but slower than average and offers only three style options for free users. To get faster results, buy a plan priced from $5-$20/monthly. Free results are automatically generated in a 3 x grid with nine images.

RESULTS: Craiyon’s algorithm had trouble with cat eyes, cat faces, and background specifics. However, give credit when credit is due: Ungainly as the results were, Craiyon at least attempted to portray the action of “cat picking daisies” with legs, mouths, and paws, instead of simply focusing on the nouns (cat, daisies) and avoiding the verb (picking).

Deep AI Art

Featuring an image aspect selector as well as dozens of free and paid styles to choose from, Deep AI also includes an AI chatbot. While the site is easy to use, images may provoke user responses from “Where is the cat?” to “Is that two bodies, one head?” to “Direct from the uncanny valley to your computer!” The so-called Genius Mode might do better, for $4.99 monthly.

RESULTS: One of four attempts yielded a photorealistic feline head, which may or may not have been attached to two bodies (you be the judge). On the other hand, photorealism is overrated. Users are advised to go with the slightly surrealistic flow.

Fotor AI Image Generator

To use Fotor AI Image Generator, create an account or login with Google. After the first free images, users will need to buy credits or a subscription. Choose from among five aspect ratios and dozens of styles. Need inspiration? Browse the impressive library of images generated by other users.

RESULTS: Three out of four images were fairly photorealistic representations of cats, grass, and daisies. Note that the software has the most trouble with eyes when the view is not head-on.

Imagine

The polished Imagine AI website boasts a six-million strong user base and 70 million images generated. The free image-generating options are limited to a 1:1 aspect ratio and eight styles.

RESULTS: High-quality flowers, cat heads, and faces, with somewhat disproportionately small bodies.

Night Cafe

Night Cafe offers five different text to image algorithms, with varying results. Overall, the highly imaginative approach is better suited to flights of fancy rather than photorealistic images. A robust community of users supports a chat room, strong image library, contests, and more. Users can accumulate a fairly generous credit package by taking actions such as publishing their images or liking other’s images.

RESULTS: From Cubist nightmare (disfigured faces and bizarre eyes) to women with cat ears, Night Cafe's AI-generated images are nonetheless not without charm.

Stable Diffusion Online 

Fairly slow, but your place in the queue is always visible, as well as the expected time left. Fortunately, while the site proclaims “Freedom: No limitations on what you can enter,” graphic word prompts yielded a black image square only.

RESULTS: While the cats depicted are quite proportionate, detailed, and generally realistic, they are more akin to an illustration rather than a photograph. Nonetheless, if you have time to wait, the free version of Stable Diffusion is a good option to try. Pro Tip: Time of day is a big factor in how long you'll wait in the queue. Avoid rush hour.

• I Tried Creating a Presentation with Free AI Slide Generators, Here's 4 Problems I Had
• Best Free AI Detection Sites

Although there is no replacement for getting your hands dirty with finger paints, technology can offer many ways for students to be creative when making art. In addition to creativity, technology can also allow students to explore and learn about art in new and engaging ways.

Some of the best free digital art tools are those from Google that help educators and students with teaching, learning, exploring, and creating art. The wide range of tools and activities available provide nearly infinite possibilities. 

#1 - Pixel Art with Google Sheets

Remember the old-school video games and their crude but charming digital art? "Pixel Art" is a style of drawing in which users create images out of a small grid with a limited number of colors. By forcing users to be creative within limitations, this method helps them to understand what’s essential to illustrate an item or idea. To create pixel art, users can apply color to the cells in a spreadsheet, using the "paint can" button in Google Sheets. To make the process easier, I created a spreadsheet template that uses conditional formatting - simply type letters in the cells and corresponding colors will fill the square. Learn more. 20-Color Pixel Art Template  

#2 - Mondrian Art with Google Sheets

Mondrian Art, named for the famous Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, is an abstract form of art that uses a regular-yet-irregular arrangement of squares and rectangles, often filled in with primary colors. Composed of lots of different-sized rectangles and squares, Mondrian Art is the perfect style to be created with digital tools such as Google Sheets. With Google Sheets you can merge cells together to make rectangles of various sizes, and then use the "paint can" button to fill them in with colors. To streamline the process, I have created a template that sets up the sheet so that the cells are all nice squares. Learn more. Mondrian Art Template  

#3 - Self-Portraits with Google Drawings 

(credit to Julie Lyle) 

Recently I came across an awesome activity from Julie Lyle on using Drawings to create self-portraits. Here’s the basic idea:  

• Create a Google Drawing and insert a photo of yourself.
• Next use the "Polyline" tool and the "Curve" tool to make colored shapes for all of the different portions of your picture.
• When done, you can then delete your original underlying photo and you will be left with a digital "clipart-style" image of yourself.

Demo video - "Doodle Yourself with Google Drawing" 

#4 - Mosaics with Google Drawings

(credit to Julie Lyle)

Similar to the self-portrait activity above, another creative way to make art with Google Drawings is this mosaic project. Rather than trying to make a realistic version of yourself, in this activity you transform a source image with colored shapes such as mosaic tiles or stained glass. Here's the basic steps: 

• Create a Google Drawing and set the background to black.
• Insert the photo you wish to modify.
• Next use any of the "Shape" tools or the "Polyline" tool to cover the image with quadrilaterals, triangles, or other shapes that fit your desired style.
• Leave some room between the shapes so the background can show through later.
• Color in the shapes to match the portion of the image they are covering (you can go with the default colors provided in Drawings, or you can use a color picker extension such as ColorZilla or Eye Dropper and then set a custom fill color).
• When done, delete the original image and voila! What remains are the colored tiles on the black background for your finished mosaic art.

#5 - Google's Arts and Culture

Google Arts & Culture from the Google Cultural Institute is dedicated to collecting and sharing art, photography, and primary source documents from all over the world and throughout history. Items are organized by themes, artists, mediums, movements, historical events, historical people, places around the world, stories of the day, and more. With Google Arts & Culture students can get closer to works of art and historical artifacts than they ever could in a museum. The digital items were scanned or photographed by Google using an ultra-high resolution camera so every brush stroke, letter, or similar detail is clearly visible. Even better, a number of the collections feature 360-degree videos and photos for an immersive experience. The mobile app version of Google Arts and Culture (Android or iOS) also includes a fun selfie option that searches thousands of artworks to find a match for your own face.  

#6 - Curator Table

Curator Table is one of Google's experiments that creates a massive virtual 3D gallery of artwork you can explore. You can use your mouse to simply browse, or you can use the search feature to pull out art for a specific artist, styles, or object. When you find the art you want, clicking on it will open a page with more details on that work. Try it here! 

#7 - Art Palette

A search engine based on color, Art Palette allows you to search through thousands of paintings, drawings, sculptures, and more, based on colors you choose. Students can then use the results to explore similarities and connections between the color-matching art. Here's how it works:  

• Click Launch Experiment on the Art Palette site.
• Select the colors for your palette from the color bar at the top.
• A grid of artwork that incorporates your colors will appear.
• Users can also click the "From an image" button to upload a picture—or use a webcam to take a picture for the site to match against.

#8 - AutoDraw

AutoDraw is a simple, easy-to-use drawing tool, with most of the typical features such as drawing, filling colors, resizing, adding text, and more. But wait, there’s a twist: AutoDraw includes Google's AI to help you draw by taking your squiggles and doodles, and offering to replace them with pre-made clipart-style images. Some possible uses might include:  

• Sketch notes
• Infographics
• Illustrating a story
• Creating a scene
• Desktop publishing (flyer, poster)
• Creative drawing

#9 - Just a Line

Is it possible to draw digitally in 3D? That's why Google created the "Just a Line" mobile app. This augmented reality app allows you to move through and draw in your physical environment. Here's how it works:  

• Install the app: Android or iOS
• Launch the app and point your camera at your surroundings.
• Use your finger to draw in the air a few feet in front of you.
• Walk around to draw in different locations.
• As you move around you can see your 3D drawing superimposed in your physical space.
• You can click the "Draw with a partner" button to let someone join you to draw together in the same space.
• You can click the "Record" button to make a video of your 3D art to share with others.

#10 - Doodle for Google

Way back in 1998, Google launched its first "Google Doodle." The company founders were going to spend a week at the Burning Man Festival and wanted to let people know they would be out of the office. So they changed the normal Google logo on the site to one that included the Burning Man logo for the second "O,” and now it has been a staple of the website to show creative versions of the Google logo to celebrate events, people, and ideas. Since 2008, Google has hosted an annual "Doodle for Google" contest, in which K-12 students create and submit their own artwork for the Google logo. Winners have their artwork displayed on Google's site, while earning valuable scholarships and tech packages for their schools. To participate, students combine any style of art with the things they are passionate about. Learn more.  

Eric Curts is an education trainer and consultant with over 20 years' experience throughout the U.S. He is an authorized Google Education Trainer and a Google Certified Innovator. Read his blog at www.controlaltachieve.com and follow @ericcurts on Twitter.

To share your feedback and ideas on this article, consider joining our Tech & Learning online community here.

• Top Free Sites for Creating Digital Art
• AI Art Generators in The Classroom: What You Need To Know
• What is Google Arts & Culture and How Can It Be Used for Teaching? Tips and Tricks

In the battle of Canva vs Adobe Express, the winner could become a staple part of your classroom setup that ultimately helps your students -- but which is best for their learning needs and your teaching ones?

This guide aims to lay out all the important features of the two platforms to leave you with a clear idea of what they offer, where they fall short, and exactly which features you could use to enhance your instruction with the most ease.

Both tools are digital design platforms that allow you to design and create projects for use in teaching. That can mean creating digital artwork, or pieces you plan to print out and use in the classroom, for example. These can also be used by students for projects and beyond.

While Adobe has that long history of professional design software offerings, Canva has fast become one of the most well-known free online design tools thanks to a combination of ease of use and simple tools. But which is best for you?

Canva vs Adobe Express: Which is best?

Functions

Canva (available for K-12 in two versions: Canva for Education and Canva for Districts) functions as an online and app-based design tool that can be used across a number of devices. The idea is to offer smart digital design tools in a super simple to use way that works even for those totally new to the idea. It does this with a combination of clear icons for controls and step-by-step guidance, plus lots of templates from which to work.

Adobe Express comes from the more complex professional world of design software yet simplifies it for easy use by more people. This uses an app, which you can download to smartphones, tablets, and computers, but stores the creations in the cloud so you can jump between devices as needed. In this way the two are similar as both, when used in app form, allow for offline working. It is only Adobe that won't let you access it via the web without an app -- making Canva more widely accessible out of the two.

In both cases the tools allow you to edit images, text, video, and audio as well as offer pre-built graphics and stock photos, with lots of choice.

Features

Canva is all about the templates, with most project ideas already started in some example format, which can then be edited to suit your needs. You are also able to start from a blank form, if you want, but in most cases it's quicker and easier to use a template -- of which there are more than 250,000. These also make for very professional looking finishes with minimal effort and -- crucially -- time.

Canva is optimized for Chromebooks so can be used even on slower machines and works collaboratively. In this way it's useful for teachers working together but also for students working on class projects with the tool. Or combine the two and work on a brainstorming project as a class using the smart screen and personal devices in the classroom as a group.

Graph tools are a helpful feature, allowing you to create math-focused layouts with ease. The education specific features are also fantastic, allowing teachers to setup a class, invite students, and have everyone collaborate. The comments part here is helpful to make communication between students and teacher simple, even between lessons.

Adobe Express also uses templates to offer a quick and easy way to get started, including a search function. These are wide-ranging and include Posters, Wallpapers, Flyers, Cards, Resumes, Facebook posts, and more. The choice isn't as wide as Canva offers, but is a good way to get started and covers a lot of needs. 

The Adobe Express software also uses AI tech, which makes dragging and dropping super simple. This is able to help you manipulate images with ease, as you'd intuitively expect to with touch controls, removing the complexity for you. Plus, being Adobe, you have more than 20,000 fonts and 175 million images to pick from in its extensive library of resources. 

Other helpful tools include basic filters, enhancements, and blur effects, and the ability to easily remove backgrounds.

Both tools auto save so you don't have to worry about losing work as you progress through -- it also makes rolling back to previous states easy too.

Compatibility

Canva is a highly compatible software platform that is setup for use on most devices. Primarily it is an app, available on iOS and Android so it can be used across tablets and smartphones. You can also download it for Windows or Mac to be used on computers. It is also a web browser accessible software that has been optimized for Chromebooks. 

Adobe Express is also very widely available in app form, although it can't be used via a web browser alone. You can download the app for iOS, Android, Samsung Galaxy, Microsoft, and Mac -- so it will work on most devices. A version is available as an extension for Chrome that has more basic functionality, including, crop, remove background, resize, convert to JPG, and convert to PNG.

Price

Both Canva and Adobe Express offer lots of their services for free. These also have premium tiers that allow you access to more features as required. 

Canva Free gets you more than 250,000 templates, more than 100 design types, hundreds of thousands of photos and graphics, collaboration, and 5GB of cloud storage. 

Canva Pro is charged at $119.99 per year, which offers all the free features and has brand kit upload options, one-click Magic Resize for images, more than 420,000 templates, 75 million images, videos and graphics, design saving for team use, 100GB of cloud storage, and social media scheduling for seven platforms.

You can also choose from Canva for Education (free for K-12), Canva for Districts (free for K-12), or Canva for Campus (for Higher Ed).

Adobe Express is free to use for the basic version, which could be enough for many students. This gets access to the many templates, tools and millions of fonts and images.

That Premium account is charged at $9.99 per month, or $99.99 per year, with a three-month free trial. This gets you a lot more content to choose from including images, fonts, refine cutout, resize and graphics groups, plan and scheduling of social media publishing, adding branding and logos in one tap, plus conversion and export from PDFs and other file types.

Uses

There are some great ways to take advantage of these tools in class but to get you started here are a few ideas.

For Adobe Express:

Create a brand
Have students come up with their own branding and logo to represent them, getting creative and having something of their personality they can inject into future projects.

Poster the class
Create visually striking posters for otherwise basic class-based posters such as health and safety, to show students how visuals can enhance content effectively. 

Get social
Don't be afraid to incorporate social media post creations into the class to help get students interested. Just be cautious they don't get too carried away and go off task.

For Canva:

Plan lessons
Use Canva to visually lay out the lesson for yourself as a teacher but also to share with students so they know what to expect and can plan accordingly.

Build student profiles
Have students create learning portfolios so they can see how they're progressing throughout the year -- this can also be a valuable revision and review tool.

Collaborate
With up to 10 members in a project, have groups of students work together, in class and digitally from home, to create a finished body of work.

Chart graphics
Ideal for math and science, Canva can be used to display data in rich charts and graphs to make presenting experiments, and more, visually engaging.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers

To share your feedback and ideas on this article, consider joining our Tech & Learning online community here.

Graphic organizers, including mind maps, Venn diagrams, infographics, and other tools, allow teachers and students to organize and present facts and ideas visually in order to understand both the big picture and the small details. 

These top graphic organizers for schools make it easy to create beautiful, informative, and productive graphic organizers that can be incorporated into lessons, quizzes, collaborative classroom projects, and more. While the freemium sites may offer added bells and whistles, the fully free sites provide a surprisingly robust selection of templates and ideas.  

BEST FREEMIUM GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS

Ayoa Mind Mapping
Ayoa’s flexible platform includes mind map templates targeting specific needs, such as the speed map, radial pie-chart-style map, simple capture map, and “organic” map, which replicates the freehand drawing process. Free accounts permit unlimited mind maps, while paid accounts range from $10-$13 monthly. 

GoConqr Mindmap
Meta mindmap, anyone? That’s right -- GoConqr provides a mind map detailing how to create your mind map! While the free basic account offers limited tools, the annual premium subscription costs a modest $12.95 and allows full access to flowcharts, flashcards, mind maps, slides, quizzes, and more.

Coggle
Coggle’s clean, stylish interface invites users to explore the creative possibilities of its collaborative mind maps, diagrams, and flowcharts. The free basic account includes unlimited public diagrams and import/export/embed features, while the professional account is just $5 per month.   

Mindomo
Using Mindomo, teachers can create diverse, multimedia mind maps that contain everything from images to math formulas to icons to audio/video. With its dedicated platform for education, Mindomo supports collaboration, commenting, grading, and much more. Integrated with G Suite and Office 365. Free basic account. 

Storyboard That
Students can create their own storyboards using the provided graphics (no drawing talent required!) or select templates from the storyboard library. With storyboard options from the simplest to multilayered, this platform is ideal for users of any age. Teachers can create timelines, storyboards, graphic organizers, and more via the education portal. 

MURAL
Use digital sticky notes to create and organize lists, flowcharts, diagrams, frameworks, methods, and drawings. Integrates with Dropbox, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Google Calendar, and other top apps. Free basic account.

bubble.us
A popular browser-based application that lets educators create a mind map, save it as an image, share, collaborate, and present. Want to try it out first? Use the editable example mind map to try the mind map editor without creating an account. Free basic account and 10-day free trial for all premium accounts. Students, teachers, and employees of nonprofit organizations receive a 50% discount.

Bublup
Bublup helps users organize all their digital content visually via an intuitive, drag-n-drop interface. Create shareable folders with content such as links, documents, images, videos, GIFs, music, notes, and more. Folders can be transformed instantly into shareable web pages. It’s easy to get started, but if you need help, peruse the detailed support pages for using the app. Free basic accounts. 

MindMeister
This stylish full-featured mind-mapping site allows educators to easily customize maps with images and links, share with students, and collaborate with colleagues. Free basic account.  

BEST FREE GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS

Corgi Graphic Organizers
A friendly, research-backed STEM platform that features a collection of digital graphic organizers, this Corgi isn’t a dog breed, but a process. Each step—Explore, Organize, Synthesize, Share—is intended to support learning for all middle and high school students, including those with learning disabilities. An impressive resource that integrates with Google Drive and Classroom, Corgi also includes a Next Generation Science Standards-based lesson library and clear instructions for use. 

Graphic Organizers from Michelle M. Truman
Nineteen graphic organizers in the form of Google docs. Simply copy the document to your Google Drive and start editing. Ranging from Concept Wheels to Character Webs to Question Frames, these simple templates allow students and teachers to start working right away. No account required.

Free Google Drawings Graphic Organizers
These 25 easy-to-use free creative templates are great if you’re tired of the same old graphic organizers. My favorites include Paint Chip Vocabulary, in which students organize words by depth or richness and SWBST (Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then), a method for exploring elements of a story. Many of these templates serve not only as graphic organizers, but also as formative assessments for your students. Just click on the template, and copy to your own Google Drive. No account required. 

Graphic Organizers from Avid
Excellent diverse collection of free graphic organizers for nearly every purpose, conveniently organized by 13 categories. Each category, from Activity Builders to Games to Problem Solving/Critical Thinking, supplies both a Google Slides and Powerpoint version of the graphic organizer. A rich resource that educators can easily incorporate into their classroom lessons and formative assessments.  

WiseMapping
A free and simple web-based open-source tool, great for creating shareable, exportable mind maps and brainstorms. 

Mind42
Mind42 offers simple, free collaborative mind-mapping software that runs in your browser. For inspiration, search publicly shared templates by tag or popularity. The intuitive user controls include tool tips to aid in operation. Although its features are not as extensive as other graphic organizers, it’s fully free, fast, and simple to start creating your first mind map.  

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• Best Free Image Editing Sites and Software 

To share your feedback and ideas on this article, consider joining our Tech & Learning online community here.

AI art generators have become increasingly popular recently thanks to platforms such as Midjourney and Dall-E 2, which is owned by OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. 

While not having yet dominated conversations in education the way ChatGPT has, these tools for creating art also have important implications in the classroom. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) art generators create realistic images and/or illustrations in various styles based upon prompts provided by users. The digital tools have the potential to save students time with tedious work and could, in theory, help engage them, however, there are ethical concerns and debates about how best to use the technology in schools. 

“What's happening in the art community and in the education community is people are saying either this is 100% the end of the world, or this is 100% the coming of a new god, and there’s nothing in between,” says Erik Fox-Jackson, Interactive Learning Designer at Adelphi University as well as an artist and graphic designer.  

“Unfortunately, there are some bad ways of using it, but there are some good ways of using it too,” says Jaime Donally, an immersive learning expert. “People tend to just want to say one or the other, as opposed to really looking at it holistically and understanding that any technology can be used for good or bad.” 

AI Art Generators Raise Different Ethical Questions Than ChatGPT 

Fox-Jackson is a proponent of using AI technology in the classroom overall, yet cautions against using AI art generators with students. One reason is the legal issues raised by the technology, which draws from existing art online. “I think they're in sort of a legally problematic area that they need to resolve,” he says. 

While there are also ethical concerns around use of ChatGPT, Fox-Jackson says these are not as baked into the technology. “ChatGPT is a large language generator,” he says. “So it basically knows how to assemble coherent sentences out of information, which is a little different than images where the images are something that's proprietary. The words are only proprietary when they're assembled in that specific way.” 

However, ChatGPT can still commit plagiarism, although plagiarism isn’t as inherently a part of what it does. “There are times where ChatGPT looks at a specific string of words and goes like, ‘Yeah, that encapsulates it perfectly.’ And that's why students shouldn't use it to submit assignments,” Fox-Jackson says. “But as a learning tool, I think it's really valuable.” 

Ways AI Art Generators Can Be Used Right Now

Brett Salakas, a veteran Australian educator and HP Education Ambassador, believes there are already compelling ways AI art generators can be used in the classroom. 

For instance, in one writing and vocabulary lesson Salakas designed for middle school students, the teacher asks students to think about the main character in a story they would like to write. As a group, students come up with characters, which are often something silly such as a wacky cow. These words are then used as part of a prompt for DALL-E 2 and images of this student-created character are generated. “You’re demonstrating vocabulary, you’re scaffolding with the words, you’re setting the kids up for a successful writing lesson,” Salakas says.  

Another approach for using AI art generators is to examine some of the problems with the technology. For instance, Salakas says when you ask DALL-E 2 to generate an image of a doctor, it tends to show you men, and if you ask for a nurse, it tends to generate images of women. Interrogating this lack of diversity and representation in the response can be an interesting exercise. “There’s a conversation to be had about the data set of the AI that we’re using,” Salakas says. 

AI Art Generators: Potential and Pitfalls  

Donally sees tremendous potential for ways in which AI art generators can be used to create 3D immersive experiences that can be used with the virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) lessons that are her focus as an educator. “We have the capabilities of being able to speak what we want to display in this immersive experience,” she says. “I think that is really powerful.” 

Ultimately, this could save time and lead to richer immersive experiences being created by educators and students. However, Donally acknowledges that since many of these tools are currently subscription-based, that will limit the accessibility in classes. The copyright issues also need to be addressed. 

Beyond potential legal implications, when it comes to art education in particular, Fox-Jackson believes AI art generators are not a great tool. “I think as often as possible students should stay away from image generators solely because this is students' only time to really experiment freely,” he says. Using such a tool seems to be the antithesis of fostering creativity.

While Fox-Jackson will use an AI art generator for presentations himself, he says he’s able to generate quality products because of his solid foundation in art and design. “As a person who's gone through art school, I've learned certain principles that I'm able to then feed into the image generator and get better results,” he says. “Because I've art-directed photo shoots, I know the kind of lens you would use for a great photo. Because I've taken color theory classes, I know that blue orange contrast is really exciting to the eye.” 

In other words, at least for now, an artist’s eye and human creativity is still an important part of the process of creating quality images. Good educators can help their students navigate these new technologies but they should always keep the emphasis on human creativity. 

• 5 Ways To Teach With ChatGPT
• How to Prevent ChatGPT Cheating
• What is GPTZero? The ChatGPT Detection Tool Explained By Its Creator

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Fortunately, in the age of computers, smartphones, and the internet, teachers and students already have the tools to readily record and access digital images. And the top free image editing tools below will help users enrich assignments, convey information, or even create art.

The following image editing sites and software range from straightforward and convenient to powerful tools that rival Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. All are fully free or offer a robust free basic account.

Best Free Image Editing Sites 

Canva Free Online Photo Editor
A freemium browser-based editor that allows users to easily upload and edit images by adding text, graphics, drawings, stickers, and other elements such as charts and graphs, Canva Free Online Photo Editor also allows users to incorporate audio and video files. Free users can upload up to 5GB of media, while Canva for Education and Canva for Nonprofits users can upload up to 100GB. Bonus: K-12 teachers are eligible to upgrade to Canva for Education at no cost.

OIE Online Image Editor
Fully free browser-based image editor that requires no login and is a breeze to use. Add text, speech bubbles, borders, or transparencies, and convert file types with a few clicks. Both basic and advanced tools are intuitive to use, and the Help page offers tips for making the most of everything. Available in 10 languages, including English, Spanish, German, and French.

Pixlr For Education
A GDPR-, CCPA-, and COPPA- compliant version of Pixlr that’s fully free for teachers, students, education professionals, and NGOs, Pixlr for Education is a super easy-to-use site with a clean stylish interface that’s great for students of any skill level. Simply upload your image and start using the tools provided, including text, animations, special effects, filters, touchup, and more. Not sure what you want to do? Check out Pixlr’s fine collection of video tutorials for users here.

Photopea
Billing itself as an advanced image editor, Photopea supports multiple popular formats such as PSD (Photoshop), XCF (Gimp), XD (Sketch App), and CDR (CorelDRAW). The generous free account allows all features, while going premium adds history steps and removes ads.

iPiccy
On this deceptively simple site, visitors will find a wide range of free photo, collage, and design tools. Upload images and start editing and creating right away. Check out the features page to quickly link to tutorials on professional-style techniques such as editing backgrounds, retouching, and meme creation. Fully free.

 Best Free Image Editing Software 

Krita
A full-featured free software download that allows users to create and edit images and illustrations using a robust suite of tools similar to those found in Photoshop. With its extensive capabilities, Krita naturally has a relatively steep learning curve compared to simpler photo-editing options. Fortunately, Krita hosts a comprehensive online user guide as well as the Krita YouTube channel, which offers dozens of videos covering the basics as well as detailed tutorials on individual tools. Downloads are available for Windows, macOS, and Linux Appimage.

Photo Pos Pro
A free downloadable image software for creating, enhancing, and editing images that includes a wide range of brushes, filters, and effects. Users have the convenient option to open the software in pro or novice interface, while the user guide provides solid direction on the basics of photo editing as well as tutorials on common tools and techniques. Be sure to check out the online AI-powered automatic photo fix, which quickly sharpens images and corrects color and lighting.

GIMP
GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) is considered by many to be the best free alternative to Photoshop. Building on more than two decades of development as an open-source program, Gimp is widely employed by both amateurs and professionals to create and edit images and illustrations of every kind. Tutorials and multiple online forums are helpful for beginners as well as more experienced users. Ideal for high school graphic arts projects. Linux/Windows/MacOs.

Paint.net
Often cited as one of the best free Photoshop alternatives, Paint.net is full-featured software with all the bells and whistles, from layers to plugins to unlimited history. A robust users’ forum offers a great way to discover how to make the most of this potent imaging software. Windows.

Inkscape
A free, open source vector graphic design tool to rival Adobe Illustrator. Features include a diverse set of drawing, shape, text, and transformation tools, as well as tutorials and forums to learn how best to use this powerful freeware. Linux/Windows/MacOs.

Reshade
A super-light and fast free image resizing software, Reshaden is designed to do one thing very well—resize/enlarge, enhance, and crop images without loss of resolution. It’s extremely easy to use, but watch the brief tutorial first for an even better result. Windows.

Ashampoo Photo Commander Free
From the German software company Ashampoo comes a free image-editing download, designed with powerful features—but not with a steep learning curve. Windows.

iRFanView
A free, fast and lightweight download that supports multiple languages, dozens of file types, and easy batch conversions. Windows.

Best Free AI Image Generators

What Is Canva And How Does It Work For Education?

Put to the test—3 Image Editing Apps for Tablets

Thanksgiving is a day to reflect with gratitude on the blessings of our lives. It’s one of the most beloved American holidays, celebrated by people of all religions and backgrounds, and ideal for incorporating into your curriculum.

However, our understanding of the day has changed over the years. While some of the following Thanksgiving lessons, activities, and games include familiar elements such as turkey and pumpkin pie, others inquire into the historical record and modern social perspectives, helping students gain a fuller, more authentic understanding.

Before diving into the following free Thanksgiving lessons, activities, and games, educators can get an overview of the changing way Thanksgiving is taught through the articles listed below under Thanksgiving Perspectives, Past and Present.

Thanksgiving Perspectives, Past and Present 

The Wampanoags' Thanksgiving
Historian David J. Silverman’s essay delves into the Wampanoag side of the Thanksgiving story. What was the state of the Wampanoag nation when the Mayflower landed? What motivated the Wampanoag to create an alliance with the English settlers? This revealing examination from a historian’s perspective is ideal for high school students. Lesson idea: Before assigning the essay, ask your students to write a few sentences on what might have motivated the Wampanoag. Then have them read the essay and write about how their views may have changed.

Thanksgiving: Another Serving
What happened to relations between the Wampanoags and the European settlers? In a span of a single generation, they went from Thanksgiving comity to the bloody battles of King Philip's War. Historian and professor of Early American History at Harvard University Jill Lepore explains in this fascinating video hosted by The Gilder Lehrman Institute.

Time: The Way American Kids Are Learning About the “First Thanksgiving” Is Changing
Should we be teaching students myth or history? This excellent article is a great starting point for teachers to learn the truth, the myths, and the historical interpretations surrounding the first Thanksgiving. Best to read before planning your lesson.

Native Educators Say Thanksgiving Lessons Can Be Accurate, Respectful, And Fun
If you’re wondering whether there’s anything suitable left to teach about Thanksgiving, don’t despair. This article details simple steps you can take right now to make your Thanksgiving lessons accurate and inclusive.

Best Free Thanksgiving Lessons and Activities

Thanksgiving Math Activities for Kids
Two engaging Thanksgiving-themed math activities include printable handouts and an exploration of math skills. Aimed at kids in grades preK-3, the Thanksgiving Coloring Activity combines arithmetic with coloring by number. For older students (grades 4-8), try the Thanksgiving graphing activity, in which a correctly plotted graph reveals a surprise message. Great fun!

Squanto's gift: A Thanksgiving science lesson
A hands-on Thanksgiving science lesson that demonstrates the importance of Patuxet tribe member Squanto (Tisquantum) to the early settlers. Ideal for grades preK-5, this lesson requires only simple materials, a bit of time and careful observations. An excellent introduction to the scientific method for younger students.

The First Thanksgiving Celebration Lesson Plan
A K-4 reading-based Thanksgiving lesson that teaches students about the lives of the Wampanoag people and their participation in the first Thanksgiving celebration. Includes key questions, extension activities and suggested reading.

Thanksgiving Music Activities
These five terrific Thanksgiving-related songs will have every kid in the classroom singing along. But there’s much more than just the joy of singing in these lessons from Beth’s Music Classroom. Included are tips for teaching music principles, activities and videos.

Thanksgiving Science Experiment
Perhaps more than any other American holiday, Thanksgiving celebrates the abundance and variety of delicious foods. And nothing makes food taste better than butter! This detailed butter in a jar experiment is perfect for teaching science with a Thanksgiving flavor. Includes chemistry discussion, photos, video, worksheets and printables.

Plimoth Patuxet Museum Teacher Toolkit
A five-unit curriculum that takes a deep dive into the first Thanksgiving. The standards-aligned lessons comprise sections on the Patuxet people, leadership and diplomacy, the crucial role of corn, the celebration as a historical event, and ways to think about giving thanks. Included in this comprehensive resource are vocabulary, themes, historical notes, and bibliography.

StoryCorps: The Great Thanksgiving Listen
The nonprofit organization Storycorps has been capturing the voices and stories of Americans since 2003. Storycorps’ Great Thanksgiving Listen invites young people to take part in this oral history project by recording an interview with an elder, mentor, friend, or anyone they admire. The Educator Toolkit provides step-by-step guidance on every aspect of the Great Thanksgiving Listen and includes printable handouts for students.

Lesson plan: After helping Pilgrims, today's Wampanoag tribe fight for their ancestral lands
A lesson for grades 6-12 that teaches about the Wampanoag people of today in the context of their historical role at the first Thanksgiving. Choose from among topics such as Thanksgiving history as told by the Wampanoag, land disputes, and gambling, then ask the provided questions. Lesson available as a Google Doc.

Celebration, Conflict and Contemplation: Digital Thanksgiving Activities and Lesson Plans for Students
Ideal for distance or hybrid learning, these free preK-12 digital Thanksgiving lessons include thought-provoking writing assignments, recipe-based math lessons, humorous turkey hijinks, and a look at the modern day lives of the Wampanoag People.

Thanksgiving Directed Drawings
Directed drawings are a great way for kids to gain basic drawing skills and confidence while creating their own artwork. Whether apple pie, cooked turkey, Happy Thanksgiving message, or cartoon turkey, these free and fun video drawing lessons are perfect for both classroom and remote learning.

Turkey Templates for Thanksgiving Creativity and Writing
Education technology expert and Google app guru Eric Curts shares Google Slides templates for building and disguising a turkey. Use it as a fun art lesson, or as a jumping-off point into a discussion about empathy with animals.

Best Free Thanksgiving Games and Interactives

PBS Kids: An Ellwood City Thanksgiving
Join beloved cartoon character Arthur the aardvark as he visits various friends and relatives for Thanksgiving, and learns about different ways of celebrating the holiday. This interactive game allows kids to select whom to visit, participate in the meal and acknowledge the role of Indigenous people. Options in this high quality game include closed captions, music, sound effects and dialog.

Plimoth Patuxet Museums: Activities and Games
Living like people of the 17th century is an excellent way to learn social history. Talk like a pilgrim, cook 17th-century food with modern recipes, and ponder 11 tricky riddles. Fun for students and teachers alike.

6 fun Thanksgiving-themed games for young learners
If you’ve never tried ABCYa games, here’s the perfect opportunity. High-quality digital games are accompanied by an amusing soundtrack that only adds to the fun. Best of all, five out of these six games are CCSS-aligned. Try the Thanksgiving printables too!

You Are the Historian: Investigating the First Thanksgiving
A great way for students to investigate and learn a more nuanced history about Thanksgiving, from both the Indigenous and Colonial perspectives.

• Best Free Indigenous Peoples Day Lessons and Activities
• 8 Ways to Create AI-Proof Writing Prompts
• Best Free Winter Holiday Lessons and Activities

Charts, graphs, and diagrams are essential tools students and teachers use to visually present data in an informative, attractive, and engaging manner.

Students can visit the sites below to create charts, graphs, and diagrams for assignments in every subject, especially those that rely heavily on data and statistics, such as science, math, history, or social studies. Teachers will find these sites ideal for creating lessons or keeping track of student progress in the classroom, whether in-person or online.  

Fully Free/No Account Setup Required

• Chartle
  Chartle users can take advantage of 10 types of charts, a gallery of example charts, useful FAQs, and the ability to style the color, patterns, and texture of every chart. Additionally, it’s easy to export charts as image, PDF, or csv files.
  
• Chartgo
  A simple, easy-to-use site for creating and sharing bar, line, pie, and area charts. Includes a user guide, video demos, and example charts. Create your chart right in the browser window or upload a csv file. Download your chart as a png, pdf, or svg file—or save it online. Couldn’t be easier!
  
• Hohli
  Easily create, edit, and share 12 types of charts and graphs directly in your browser, with no need to upload csv files. Hohli automatically generates a URL for sharing and HTML for embedding into a website. Customize your chart with a straightforward menu of size, color, text, and axis options. Integrates with Google Charts API, a free dynamic chart-generating program.
  
• Plotvar
  Quickly create a line, bar, pie, or dynamic (“live”) graph and download your chart as a png, jpg, pdf, or svg file. Extra for advanced students: Tutorials to create charts with programming languages such as C#, GNUplot, python, and jschart.
  
• Online Charts
  Offering 12 customizable chart types, including area, radar, meter, and bubble, Online Charts goes beyond what other free sites provide, yet is easy to navigate. Simply click on each menu tab to add or edit design, data, or fonts, then preview in a small, medium, or large version. Save online or download as png, svg, jpg, pdf, or csv file.
  
• Kids’ Zone: Create a Graph
  From the National Center for Education Statistics, this free government site offers 5 graph types, graph examples, ideas for having fun with graphs, and the ability to save online. 

Fully Free With Free Account Setup/Email

• Chart Maker
  Very simple and easy to get started right away creating your own basic pie, donut, or bar charts. Share via social media or the provided link. An account isn’t required to create charts, but it will permit users to save creations online, submit for public review, and comment/vote on others’ images.
  
• Meta Chart
  With 12 chart types available, a clear FAQ page and tutorials, it’s fast and fun to create charts with Meta Chart. No account required to get started, but you’ll need a free account to save and edit your charts. Bonus: Create and share private charts, visible only to those with a PIN.

Free Basic Plan With Account Setup/Email

• LucidChart
  Cloud-based platform for visualizing data with timelines, mind maps, venn diagrams, and other charts. Students and educators are eligible for a free education account, which includes unlimited document creation, three editable documents, and basic collaboration and sharing capabilities. The free education account is integrated with Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Gmail; Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and OneDrive.
  
• Cacoo
  Offers a wide selection of templates and shapes plus the ability to collaborate with others in real time while creating a chart or diagram. The free education plan includes unlimited users, six sheets, and up to 15 collaborators. Check out the tutorial section [https://cacoo.com/blog/categories/tutorials] for ideas on creating and sharing lesson plans [https://cacoo.com/blog/creating-lesson-plans-cacoo/] and diagrams.
  
• Visme
  A comprehensive presentation platform used by K-12, higher education and business customers, Visme provides a free account allowing up to five projects, jpg downloads, and selected templates and charts/widgets.
  
• infogram
  More than just a chart creator, infogram offers a wide array of methods to visualize information, including infographics, reports, maps, dashboards and much more—in addition to 18 types of charts. Free basic education account allows up to ten projects using more than 37 interactive charts types and 13 map types. 

►50 Web 2.0 Sites for Schools

►30 Sites and Apps for Digital Storytelling

►Top 10 Free Sites for Creating Digital Art

Digital image libraries are essential to today’s teachers and students. Yet while stock image sites such as Shutterstock, iStock, and Getty Images offer an impressive selection of high-quality images and vector illustrations, these sites are typically beyond the budget of most school districts. 

Fortunately, the image and clip art sites below provide an extensive supply of moderate- to high-quality visuals for cost-conscious schools. Most of these sites are completely free, and most have a clear license/FAQ page explaining what uses are allowed or prohibited. 

15 Sites for Finding Images and Clip Art for Education

1. Find Icons
   A comprehensive source of more than 500,00 free vector icons and icon packs that allows users to search by keyword, size, style, color, or popularity. Bonus features include an image converter and discount codes for the stock image site iStock. 
2. Flickr Commons: The Commons
   The Commons, from the photo-sharing site Flickr, serves as a free catalog of the world’s public photos with no known copyright restrictions, contributed by dozens of government and academic bodies. Comments from Flickr members provide context and additional information for many images. Safesearch option available. 
3. FreePhotoBank
   This stock photo site offers hundreds of free stock images, all having a Creative Commons Attribution alone license. The pictures of FreePhotoBank are free to download, use, and modify with attribution. Search by image category tiles, such as buildings, flowers, or animals. 
4. Freepik
   With photos, vector images, Photoshop (PSD) files, customizable icons, easy-to-edit illustrations, and a beta online template editor, Freepik is a one-stop shop for free images and image tools. Free and premium content.
5. Gratisography
   Gratisography is a great resource for creative and quirky stock photos and vector images, highlighting unusual finds such as “Walking Hands,” “Scared Man,” and “Rhino Party.”  It's not only fun to browse, but also provides a clear, plain-language explanation of what users can and can’t do with the photos. 
6. Kaboompics
   A professional-looking site featuring free high-quality photos in diverse categories, from lifestyle to technology to healthcare. A nifty perk is that each photo includes a free downloadable complementary colors palette. 
7. KIdaha.com
   A fun, kid-focused clip art site featuring human and monster characters. Paid and free content. 
8. NegativeSpace
   A stylish and professional-looking site offering a wide variety of free, high-resolution Creative Commons CC0 photographs as well as free virtual backgrounds for videoconferencing and remote teaching. Be sure to check out the awesome abstract and outer space photos!
9. OpenClipArt
   One of the oldest free clip art sites offers a collection of more than 160,000 vector graphics, all in the public domain. Download as PNG or SVG files. Includes a handful of NSFC (Not Safe For Classroom) works. Artistic students or teachers can create an account and upload their own artwork.
10. Pexels
    A top resource not only for free stock images, but also free stock videos. Pexels hosts photo and video challenges for multiple categories, with professional photography equipment awarded to winners. Create a free account to collect your favorites and contribute your own images and videos. 
11. Photos For Class
    This education-focused site provides everything teachers and students need to find and use Creative Commons photos for school assignments. The four-step filtering process ensures that all images are appropriate for kids—and they make it easy to properly attribute photos.
12. Pics4Learning
    A safe, curated image library for classroom assignments, school websites, or any education-related project, Pics4Learning’s images cover a diverse spectrum of subjects, from American Sign Language to Fractals to Weather. Contribute your own JPEG or PNG images. 
13. Pixabay
    In just ten short years, Pixabay has grown to be one of the best-known and most comprehensive image sharing sites. Here visitors can explore and download collections of photos, illustrations, vector images, videos, and even music. All are free to download and free to use under the Pixabay license, which is a modified  Creative Commons CC0 license. Pixabay shines in another way as well—its blogs and forums keep users apprised of the latest news and tips to make the most of the site. 
14. Unsplash
    Thousands of free, sometimes ordinary—but often eye-popping—images include categories such as nature, current events, technology, and many more suitable for education use. All are free to download and use according to the Unsplash License. A fun feature for contributors is the “Made With Unsplash” page, which showcases creative remixes of its images. Unsplash provides strong support for its contributors, so it's a great place for young photographers to get started sharing their work. 
15. Vector Characters  
    A relatively simple site, Vector Characters focuses on character-based vector art in categories such as man, woman, child, robot, etc. For adding a touch of whimsy or humor to any school project, check out the Fruit Vector, Monster Vector, and Animal Vector categories. Free and premium content. 

• Put to the test—3 Image Editing Apps for Tablets
• How to Use a Document Camera for Remote Learning

While every college and university faces challenges in adjusting to the new normal and what a hybrid learning environment will look like for students, perhaps most unique is the state of art schools at which hands-on requirements are integral to learning. 

We chat with Olga Stella of the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan, about how implementing a virtual desktop infrastructure is helping art and design students make the grade. 

Sketching a New Plan

“We had a stay at home order that went into effect in March,” says Stella. “We had about a week to transition 1,400 students to online experiences so we could comply with the state's order to close campus. Our faculty pivoted to finish the semester strong virtually, but we're coming back 8/31 to campus with a more intentional plan using tech to keep students on track.” 

The institution is a traditional art and design school, so in order to accommodate that necessary in-person experience, liberal arts classes are going fully online, while some other courses will be offered in a hybrid mode to reduce the density of people on campus. 

“When you think about art and design there's a lot of hands-on making and creating of work,” says Stella. “We have studio classes that require equipment—a glassblowing studio, a wood shop—so scheduling allows us to maintain appropriate social distancing within those facilities.”

Staff is reconfiguring the physical footprints so the classrooms are bigger and can safely accommodate students. At times, faculty and teachers may move between more than one room in order to help support the students as they work.

Starting With a Blank Canvas

“What's exciting is that we've never really done online before, so there's a number of things the college has really invested in,” says Stella. “One of the things is bringing in expertise from a firm to rethink how some of these classes work, how we can think about them from a virtual first perspective and rework for a hybrid or online-only experience in the fall. 

The institution is implementing the Dell EMC VxRail Hyperconverged Infrastructure, a new infrastructure that allows for quick and seamless updates of all the software packages students use to create their work, such as 3D design and modeling packages. 

“While students can download these programs, a lot of times their computers don't have the system requirements to run the software on the device itself,” says Stella. “By using the VxRail, we're basically expanding our computer lab into the students' homes or dorms or wherever they are working, thereby reducing density on campus (or in the physical computer lab) and making it as convenient and easy for the students to access tech, work on their projects, and do their classwork.”

Tech Provides the Palette

“I think people find it surprising at the amount of tech that is already used at design schools—a lot of the software packages are integral to creating the work,” says Stella. “Our students come from all different backgrounds, with potential inequality of resources when they are forced to work from home.” 

Adjusting with tech tools such as a virtual desktop allows students to access what they need to be successful as if they were in a seat in a computer lab. “You can't take the glass-blowing studio home with you, but the modeling package that the designers use, you can,” says Stella.

With some software programs, professors can use a video conferencing platform such as Zoom to share the student’s screen and use a 3D-modeling package to provide that constructive feedback in real time. It provides an opportunity for interactive teaching.

“We've done very intentional support bringing our faculty to a comfort level with the tech,” says Stella. “We want our students to feel empowered and supported in moving their lives and educational careers forward, and that this pandemic doesn't need to hold them back.”

Silver Linings

Implementing the virtual desktop infrastructure is providing challenges—and new opportunities. The IT team has wrestled with rightsizing the workstation infrastructure while also enabling students to use their own devices. 

“Beyond this unfortunate current situation, however, this will be a game-changer for our students,” says Stella. “Learning is so much more flexible because they will continue to have access to the high-end resources our school is known for, in the comfort of their own home and learning space.”

The platform is also an eye opener for new possibilities, including other kinds of programs that could be offered to make the institution even more accessible. “I think about working parents, students who are managing work schedules, those with physical challenges, even simple location issues,” says Stella. “We can now serve those students who might be living out of state with access to our faculty and our classes.”

What's Next

Investing in technology such as a virtual desktop is helping to optimize learning long term, not only through a wider variety of classes and types of students we can reach, but for faculty learning and professional development. Leveraging existing partnerships across a wide range of industries can also create opportunities to increase continuing education and certificate programs.

“Part of what we recognize is that we are passionate about creativity, we are passionate about the roles artists and designers play in society,” says Stella. “Part of what has driven us is that our world needs creative people now more than ever, to help create the solutions for the challenges we are facing, but also to help us as a society to process and understand what’s happening around us. And there's a lot to process and understand right now.”

Tech Tools Used

•  Zoom 
•  Blackboard 
•  RealVNC 
•  Labstats 
•  Google G Suite 
•  Various webcams 
•  Limited equipment loan-outs for local students without any computer at all 

• Best Zoom Shortcuts for Teachers
• Best Webcams for Teachers and Students

Google Slides is a super useful teaching tool that's totally free. In an age of want-it-now impatience, however, sometimes clicking through Slides can be a bit much for students. One way to speak in their digital language while remaining concise and getting your point across is to use an animated GIF. So converting your Google Slides show into an animated GIF is the quickest way to do this and can be done for free.

An animated GIF is essentially an image file, or more accurately a video, which shows a selection of images, like a slide show, in quick succession and on repeat. Crucially, this can be opened on pretty much any device, including smartphones, tablets, and laptops. It's also condensed in size, making it ideal for sharing quickly and easily in emails and beyond.

One tool which allows you to convert a Google Slides document into an animated GIF, for free, is Tall Tweets, created by the awesome Amit Agarwal.

• Google Classroom review
• Google Classroom for teachers
• How to setup Google Classroom

With Tall Tweets you can import a Google Slideshow, set the duration for each slide (as well as some other options), and then create and download an animated GIF version of your slideshow. This can be used with many Google Slides projects to export the final product. 

Many tools to make animated GIFs are available, but it is always helpful to find one that is free and super easy to use. See below for detailed directions on how to use this great tool.

Create Your Google Slideshow

First you need to finish creating the Google Slideshow that you want to convert into an animated GIF. For helpful tips on making the slideshow, check out our Best Student Templates for Google Docs, Slides, Sheets and Drawings.

A key factor to keep in mind is that you may want some slides to last longer, and some to be shorter, when playing as a GIF later. Although you can't make a specific slide last longer, you can make it look like it does. One way to do this is to make multiple copies of the slide, without making any changes to it, so it looks like the scene is lasting longer. Here's exactly how to do that.

• Select the slide you want to last longer.
• Make a copy of the slide by clicking "Slide" and "Duplicate slide", or copy and paste the slide, or press "Ctrl" and "D" (for duplicate).
• Repeat this multiple times to make 5 or 10 copies of the slide (for example).

Later when the slideshow gets converted into a GIF, it will look like the slideshow has paused on this slide for longer. Tall Tweets has a limit of 100 slides when creating the animated GIF, so be sure your slideshow does not exceed that amount.

Convert Google Slides with Tall Tweets

Now you can convert your Google Slideshow into an animated GIF at the Tall Tweets website. Yup, you'll need to head over there to have you Google Slides offering uploaded to convert and download as a GIF. This is a simple enough process, but for clarity, these are the steps.

• Go to Tall Tweets.
• Click the "Select Presentation" button.

• Browse your Google Drive to find and select the slideshow you want to convert.
• The site will now make a copy of each slide. This can take a while depending on how many slides are in your presentation.
• When the slides have all been loaded you can now enter your settings.

GIF Image Width (in pixels) 

For this, enter how large you want your animated GIF to be. The wider the GIF, the larger the file size will be. Very large GIFs will take longer to load on websites, and some services have limits on how large of a GIF you can post. For example the maximum file size for an animated GIF on Twitter is 5MB on mobile and 15MB on web.

Slide Duration (in seconds) 

For this part enter a number for how long each slide should last. For some slideshow (such as comic strips or eBooks) you will want the slides to last long enough for people to read the content. However, for stop-motion animation, you may want the slides to move much quicker, such as 0.1 or 0.25 seconds per slide.

• When ready click the "Create GIF" button.
• When done the animated GIF will display.
• You can save your own copy by clicking the "Save" button, or by simply right-clicking on the GIF and choosing "Save image as…"

• Google Classroom review
• Google Classroom for teachers
• How to setup Google Classroom

Mars Student Imaging Project

Take science research out of this world with NASA's Mars project

Pros: This complete package of curriculum, resources, and professionals to support your class’s science and space learning goals.

Cons: Teachers new to the program should brace themselves for a serious learning curve: Implementation can be weeks-long.

Bottom Line: One of the best authentic inquiry space experiences out there: Use this tool to grow the next generation of researchers in your classroom.

Read more 

App of the Day picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed by Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best ed-tech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly. 

By Common Sense Education

I started this blog 10 years ago, which was shortly after using Twitter and other social media tools to connect with educators. Part of connecting and spreading the word of new posts, online conferences I’ve organized, online courses, Twitter chats, and other news is creating visuals to share online. I’ve learned to use free web tools to design headers on different social networks, graphics for books and digital badges, banners, flyers, parent newsletters, programs, digital magazines, book covers, logos, and more! Below I’ve listed free design tools teachers and students can use to create digital graphics and publications. The awesome part is these tools are free and offer access to awesome fonts, stock photos, frames, templates, and icons. This way your students can begin designing visuals to highlight their innovative ideas, spread their passion, share their creativity or become influencers.

Web Tools for Creating Awesome Graphics

• Canva is my favorite free web tool and app for designing graphics. The majority of the visuals on this blog and that I share on social networks are designed on Canva. You can access free templates that can be copied to make creating the same type of visual quick and easy. Find templates for creating logos, flyers, posters, greeting cards, business cards, online magazines, and social media headers and graphics (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). The fonts are amazing as well as the images, icons, frames, and color schemes. Canva also helps you learn more about graphic design with tutorials and free design courses and tips! If you want your students to truly learn about graphic design you can access the free workshops, lesson plans, and teaching materials.
• Gravit is a simple online graphic design tool I just learned about with a library of templates for designing posters, presentations, social media graphics, greeting cards, and more! Choose from a library of fonts, stock images, shapes, lines, emojis, and more. I really love the look of this web tool.
• Design Wizard is a simple online graphic design tool with a library of templates for designing different graphics, Facebook covers, ads, greeting cards and even videos! Choose from a library of fonts, shapes, and stock images.

To thank you for your sharing, friendship and support over the years I am sharing free tips, learning resources, web tools and apps for 25 days in my Digital December STEM Advent Calendar. Just click on the calendar below and a post will appear for that day. NOTE! The post will not appear until that day. If you enjoy these resources, then take one of my fully accredited continuing education and graduate online courses or check out my latest book, Hacking Digital Learning Strategies with EdTech Missions!

cross posted at teacherrebootcamp.com

Shelly Terrell is a Technology and Computer teacher, education consultant, and author of books including Hacking Digital Learning Strategies: 10 Ways to Launch EdTech Missions in Your Classroom. Read more at teacherrebootcamp.com.

Comic Life

Creative tool for visual storytelling through comics

Pros: Offers a creative outlet to demonstrate concepts in all content areas.

Cons: Lacks some features for classroom use; kids may spend too much time playing with the program and not completing a project.

Bottom Line: Comic Life helps students apply their understanding with a creative approach, but guidelines are needed to ensure success.

Read more 

Site of the Week picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed by Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best edtech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly. 

By Common Sense Education

Piktochart

Add oomph to info with sleek infographic tool

Pros: Design quality and inspirational templates are top-notch; students can easily create professional-looking infographics with a few clicks.

Cons: The free account is quite limited; to do more than the basics, a PRO account will be required.

Bottom Line: Tech- and design-savvy students will immediately take to this well-designed, reasonably easy-to-use tool.

Read more 

App of the Day picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed by Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best ed-tech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly. 

By Common Sense Education

Do you use infographics in your classroom? Student readers should be able to gather information from infographics. Student creators should be able to make one. In this blog post, I’ll share five tips for creating infographics with students, along with a few places to find examples. You’ll also hear about a tool you can use in your classroom to help students make infographics this school year.

An infographic presents information in a visual format. I’ve featured infographics in my blog posts before (like this one). You’ve probably come across them in newspaper articles or magazines too. For student consumers and student creators, infographics are an absolute must-have. They communicate information with words, numbers, and visuals. Students should be able to read this type of media, and they can make their own too.

Creating Infographics with Students

Below, you’ll find five tips for creating infographics with students this school year. I mention these free graphic organizers, which include a keyword search activity. I also give a shout out to select features in Spark Post. Let’s dive into the tips for making infographics and a guide to using Post with students!

Examine Exemplars

Exemplars help students understand what a product can look like when it is finished. They can also help set expectations for students. You might take a look at a favorite online news source. Or you can search for topic-specific infographics with an Advanced Google search. If you use an Advanced Google search, you may want to include a file type to narrow down your options. For example, infographics are often shared with readers as PDF or JPEG files. So you can toggle in the search bar to choose one of these file types.

Another option is to go to Pinterest. There you can search for infographic boards created by other educators. Here is one board you might find useful. This website from Kids Discover has a few infographic examples you can take a look at too. During whole-class discussions, project the infographic for everyone to see. Do you want students to take a look at them in small groups or partners? Then print out the infographics or send them to a shared folder for students to explore.

Discuss Symbols

An essential component of a strong infographic are symbols or icons. These represent big ideas and should resonate with an audience as soon as they see it. Sometimes these icons become bullets on a list of information. Other times, they are next to a data point to provide some extra emphasis.

Pose questions as you examine exemplars with students. For example, ask them why the creator of an infographic might have chosen a specific icon. You might also ask them what other icons could accomplish the same goal to communicate a point.

Brainstorm Keywords

At the bottom of the blog post, I share steps for using Spark Post. I show off the Noun Project’s library of icons. These are accessible from within Spark Post. But of course, you might search for icons using another tool. No matter which platform you decide to use, students will need to do a keyword search. 

This set of free graphic organizers includes a keyword search planning page.

You might brainstorm as a whole class search terms related to a specific topic. Alternatively, you might ask students to work with a partner. Together they can list words to help them find a particular type of icon. This strategy can address frustrations students might feel as they search for icons. It can also have them build their vocabulary around a specific topic.

Set a Size

As you examine exemplar with students, they’ll notice lots of things. One thing the most likely notice is that these come in different shapes and sizes. You might decide that you want students to all create a graphic of the same size. This could be because you want students to share it in a consistent way. Or you might have an idea on how you’re going to publish these for a wider audience.

Of course, you might give students more flexibility. Or you can give them a few choices of sizes to pick from; it’s totally up to you. In Spark Post, there is the option to choose a size as soon as you get started. Students can also resize the infographic to change the shape in the middle of their project. There is the option to create infographics in multiple sizes by using the resize feature. 

Share Big or Small

Like any exciting piece of student work, you want to establish an audience. This audience might be small, just the size of your classroom. Students could post their creations in a shared space like Seesaw or Padlet. Alternatively, students could create infographics based on a data set given by a local organization. Then that organization might review student creations and post on their own platforms.

There is no one way, or right way, to have student share with an audience. I talk about authentic audiences in my book, Tasks Before Apps: Designing Rigorous Learning in a Tech-Rich Classroom. No matter what audience you choose, introduce it to students at the beginning of the project. Establishing an audience is an essential part of providing relevance for students. 

Using Spark Post to Create Infographics

In the steps below, I’ll share some tips for creating infographics using Spark Post. If you’re a regular follower of the blog (sign up here) you know I love sharing the Spark tools. Ben Forta and I also have a book titled 40 Ways to Inject Creativity in the Classroom with Adobe Spark. This book shares lots of lesson ideas. Use this link to download graphic organizers to help you get started with Adobe Spark.

Students can access Spark Post from both a web browser on a Chromebook or laptop and an iOS or Android device. The screenshots below show my Chrome browser on my MacBook. However, the features are similar to the mobile app as well.

If students use the web version, they’ll have to choose the graphic option, as opposed to Spark Video or Spark Page. You can learn more about using Video and Page in this blog post. Students are first asked to choose a background image and a size for their infographic. Both of which they can change later.

Infographics typically have solid backgrounds. So you may decide to have students choose an image during this first step and delete it later to add a solid background. Or they can press the “skip button at the bottom of the screen.

The + at the top right of the screen allows students to add both text and icons. This option is where students can search through the Noun Project to find icons to add to their infographic.

Often infographics have different sections divided by colors or lines. If you choose the layout button, you’ll be able to change the number of segments in the infographic. You can also swap out the colors or add other pictures if you like.

Sharing Student Infographics

Once students have finished their infographic, they can share it as a link for anyone to view. Alternatively, they can download it as a JPEG, PNG, or PDF file. Again, there isn’t just one way to do this. You’ll want to determine how you want students to share their final creation. That will dictate the way that they choose to publish their infographic. Students can download their infographic in multiple formats. This tool gives them lots of options to show off their work with a larger audience.

Download these free graphic organizers which include a keyword brainstorming sheet.

cross posted at classtechtips.com

Dr. Monica Burns is a former classroom teacher, Speaker, and Curriculum & EdTech Consultant. She is the author of Tasks Before Apps (ASCD) and #FormativeTech (Corwin). Visit Monica's site ClassTechTips.com for more ideas on how to become a tech-savvy teacher.

The Adobe Spark team announces new features to increase users' creative expression, collaboration, and the option to work in local languages.  

New features include: 

• Fresh text animations and animated stickers in the iOS app
• New templates, including premium templates for  paid members that feature bespoke fonts
•  Collaboration: Invite anyone to edit Spark projects on the web
•  Spark Post (iOS and Android), Spark Page (iOS), and Spark Video (iOS) are now available in French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Portuguese  

Just about a month ago I led a special webinar for teachers all about Adobe Spark. Now typically when I share this powerful, open-ended creation tool, I focus on ways to turn students into creators. Not this time. This webinar was all about the wonderful things teachers can do with the Spark tools.

In this blog post, I share highlights from the webinar (see more upcoming events here) so you can pick and choose which teacher projects to explore. Whether you want to create newsletters or classroom posters, the possibilities are truly endless. The three Adobe Spark tools make it possible for teachers to create websites, movies, and graphics from any device. So if you have access to a web browser or want to download the free app on your iPhone or iPad, you’ll be totally set.

Check out my book with Ben Forta, 40 Ways to Inject Creativity in the Classroom with Adobe Spark for more ideas on using Adobe Spark in your classroom!

Creative Teacher Projects

You can leverage the power of EdTech tools like Adobe Spark to create lots of items for your classroom. Although I highlight four favorite teacher projects in the list below, don’t let my ideas limit you. 

Classroom Newsletters

A monthly classroom newsletter is a great way to stay in touch and communicate information with families. You might share a bunch of snapshots from a field trip or special event from the month. A newsletter is a great way to showcase all of the wonderful things that have happened in the weeks before the newsletter goes out. 

In addition to focusing on special events or a recap of the month, a newsletter can also include a call to action. Use the “button” feature in Spark Page to encourage families to fill out a Google Form to sign up to volunteer for an event. Additionally, you can add video links to your Page to share resources with families to help them have content-rich conversations with their children at home. 

Create Class Movies

You don’t need a camcorder or a fancy camera to make a great class movie. Spark Video is a fantastic tool that lets users combine images to form a slideshow. Although you also have the option to add video clips to your movie, I love how Spark Video makes it easy to combine images.

So if you took a lot of snapshots from a field trip this year, bring them all together with a Spark Video. If you have families that speak multiple languages at home, you can actually duplicate the movie project by clicking on the duplicate button on your Projects screen – subscribe to my YouTube channel or sign up for my newsletter to get notified when this tutorial goes live.

Design Your Own Posters

From flyers in a student folder to announcements posted online, a Spark Post creation is perfect for sharing. With Spark Post, you can make graphics in any size. You might use this tool for classroom posters, to share instructions with students, highlighting new strategies, or even sharing an inspiring quote like the one below. 

There is now the option to download your Spark Post as a PDF too. This new option especially makes Post an excellent tool for creating classroom posters, flyers, and any time of paper or digital communication with families. If you haven’t tried Post yet, make sure to check out the option to add icons to your creation. With the icon feature, you can choose symbols that grab the attention of readers and direct them to more information. In this blog post I discuss why I love to use icons in Spark Video too. 

Professional Portfolios

Keeping track of your growth as a professional and chronicling your success stories from the school year can seem like an overwhelming task. An online space to capture your professional accomplishments gives you the opportunity to add text, images, and links all in one place. All you have to do is start a new Spark Page, and then you can organize your content and feature any updates as the school year progresses. 

One thing I love about Spark Page is how easy it is to update the link to the published page after you’ve made a few edits. As you can see in the picture above, when you make changes to your Page all you have to do is press the Publish button again, and you’ll have the option to update the link. This option lets you share one link when you first get started with your Spark Page professional page, and not have to worry about replacing the link when you add updates throughout the school year.

Now of course I love the Adobe Spark tools for student creations – Ben Forta and I wrote a whole book about it! But for teacher projects like the ones mentioned above, Spark is certainly a standout. So many teachers tag me on social media (@classtechtips) when they share their Spark creations – I can’t wait to see what you make too.

Head over to Adobe Spark’s website to get started with one of these teacher projects!

I've had the pleasure of working with this company. All opinions are my own. 

cross posted at classtechtips.com

Dr. Monica Burns is a former classroom teacher, Speaker, and Curriculum & EdTech Consultant. She is the author of Tasks Before Apps (ASCD) and #FormativeTech (Corwin). Visit Monica's site ClassTechTips.com for more ideas on how to become a tech-savvy teacher.

Pixton

Popular comic creation tool well-tuned to classrooms

Pros: Intuitive design with plenty of options for sharing work and adding multimedia.

Cons: Limited potential for creating original artwork, and available art depicts mostly human characters.

Bottom Line: Students will be motivated to share subject knowledge using the fun language of comics.

[Great Sound, Graphics Draw Kids Into Disaster Sim]

Read more.

App of the Day picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed by Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best ed-tech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly.

By Common Sense Education

When it comes to sharing student work, there are lots of ways to establish a workflow in your classroom. Are you using Google Classroom and/or Google tools with your students? I have a step-by-step strategy to share with you to make it easy for students to share their work with a teacher and fellow students quickly.

This strategy combines two favorite classroom tools. The first is Adobe Spark, a set of three powerful creation tools for students and users of any age. Spark is a set of Chromebook-friendly and iPad-friendly creation apps and web-based tools. Here is a quick overview with links to several use cases for each one:

• Post – a graphic design tool perfect for capturing book quotes and creating classroom posters
• Video – a moviemaking tool students can use to document steps in a science experiment or tell a story
• Page – a website-building tool that lets kids publish online to share biographies and more

The Google Slides strategy I share below works on any device running both Spark and Slides. You can have some students take part in this workflow using iPads, others on Chromebooks, a few on Macs in a computer lab, and even students on an iPhone. The possibilities are truly endless.

[Class Tech Tips: Movie-Making in the STEM Classroom with Spark Video]

Sharing Spark with Google Slides

Before students can share their creations with Google Slides they have to finish their movie, website or graphic. There are different steps for publishing Spark Post, Page and Video. For all of them, you can use the Share button at the top of the screen. When students share a creation with Google Slides it doesn’t matter how they share their final product. Here are the options:

• Post – publish as a link or download as a picture file (shown in the image below)
• Video – publish as a link or download as a movie file
• Page – publish as a link or download as a PDF file (note: the PDF option is only available on Chrome)

Setting Up a Slide Deck

Once your students have published their Spark creation using one of the options above, have them join you in a shared Google Slides presentation. You’ll want to set this up with sharing permissions for students to edit the slide deck. When you create the slide deck, like the one shown below, create a slide for each student in your class. You might want to use a template with space for them to add their name or a short explanation of their work.

How will your students know where to add? You might count off students so they each have a number that corresponds to their slide. Or if you replicate these steps throughout the school year, you might add each students name to each slide one time then duplicate the file every time you use this sharing strategy.

How will your students access the Google Slides presentation? You can share the link to the slide deck in Google Classroom or another LMS. When I model this strategy with teachers, I usually shorten the link to the shared slide deck with a tool like bit.ly. Then teachers type in this link to access the editable slide deck where they can share their work.

Sharing in Slides

When students are inside the slide deck, they can share their Spark creations in a few different ways. One option is to paste the link to their Post, Page or Video right onto their slide. Using the edit link option, they can change the link to say “click here to watch/view.” If students have downloaded their Post, Page or Video as a picture file, PDF, or movie file, they can add that file to their drive and a link to the file or insert the picture or movie right onto their slide.

Sharing with slides is an excellent way for students to see their classmate’s creations quickly. Since all three Spark tools let students update their work to the same link, it’s also a good option for having students provide feedback to their peers during different iterations of their projects. If you would like students to comment on their classmates’ work, they can use the traditional comment feature in slides or even leave a note in the speaker notes section of the slide. For more information on using Spark to practice digital citizenship skills with students, check out this blog post.

Creating with Adobe Spark

In my book Tasks Before Apps: Designing Rigorous Learning in a Tech-Rich Classroom I talk about the importance of empowering students as creators. Students of all ages can use the Spark tools to create graphics, movies, and websites. Here is an excerpt from the book on creation in the classroom:

“Creating a product requires students to synthesize the information they have explored during a unit of study and demonstrate their understanding in a tangible manner. Students can create a range of products to demonstrate mastery of the learning goal(s) you have identified for a daily lesson or a month-long unit. There is no one right answer as to what students should create for any given unit of study. Digital tools now let students create dynamic products that include a range of media, allow for instructional differentiation, and promote curiosity and collaboration. Advances in technology allow students to build, sketch, and write as they explore new concepts and demonstrate their learning.” (p. 24)

What type of products can students create with Spark and share in Slides? Well, the possibilities are truly endless. You might start off the year using this strategy to share All About Me videos. Or you might have students share math tutorials with their classmates to review a strategy for solving a problem.

Are you ready to empower students as creators and give them a space to share their work? Head over to this page with Adobe Spark educational resources for more information on using this powerful creation tool in your classroom!

I've had the pleasure of working with this company. All opinions are my own.

cross posted at classtechtips.com

Dr. Monica Burns is a former classroom teacher, speaker, and curriculum & edtech consultant. She is the author of Tasks Before Apps (ASCD) and #FormativeTech (Corwin). Visit Monica's site ClassTechTips.com for more ideas on how to become a tech-savvy teacher.

At the beginning of the school year we can get students focused on setting and accomplishing learning goals and personal goals by getting them to create digital vision boards. Vision boards are basically collages of inspirational people, quotes, and visuals representing personal goals. Extremely successful people swear by them. In fact, this was an idea inspired by The Secret by Rhonda Byrne that I wrote about in 2014 and included in my book, The 30 Goals Challenge for Educators: Small Steps to Transform Your Teaching. I’ve been getting my students to create digital vision boards instead of poster vision collages and share two templates/versions with you below and my students’ examples. Find more student examples here. This is one free Buncee template I created for any teacher or student to copy and edit as they wish. This past year my students also chose One Word to inspire them and added this to the digital vision board. Read more about this in my post about One Word Digital Vision Boards. This is the free Buncee template for the One Word Vision Boards. Whichever idea you try the idea is for students to revisit their boards regularly to keep them focused on their goals and inspired. I get students to do this by getting them to reflect in their journals at least once a month on what they are doing to accomplish the goals they set in their vision boards. Below, are a list of additional free web tools and apps for creating vision boards with a few examples.

[20+ Emoji Activities and Resources for Teaching Math, Science, and English]

Student One Word Vision Boards

Web Tools

• Buncee– educational web tool and iOS app where students add digital content (free images, audio clips, YouTube video, videos, voice recordings, stickers, etc.) to a board to create presentations, collages, posters, and so forth.
• Google Slides and Google Draw are other options. You could easily use this Buncee template in Google Slides.
• Genial.ly is a free multimedia tool for creating dynamic digital presentations and interactive images.
• Padlet and LinoIt are other ways to create a vision board or set goals with learners. Check out this example of my class goals here and an inspiration board here!
• Pinterest– free and popular curation web tool, iOS/Android app, and bookmarklet to easily pin inspiring posts, documents, videos, and images to a board.
• Canva– web tool and iPad app with a free library of stock images, stickers, and graphics.
• EduGlogster– web tool and app that allows students to combine their own images, graphics, audio, video and text to create a multimedia scrapbook.
• Smore– web tool to create digital flyers with videos, icons, and images. Some teachers have used this web tool to create infographics.
• Pic-Collage– iOS/Android app for creating visual collages that can include video. Also, find a library of stickers, frames, and templates.
• VisionBoard.cc– Chrome extension to create a vision board and set it as a homepage.

Challenge: Start the school year right by getting students to create vision boards.

cross posted at teacherrebootcamp.com

Shelly Terrell is an education consultant, technology trainer, and author. Read more at teacherrebootcamp.com.

• Emojipedia is a useful site for discovering what each emoji means and keeping up with the latest in emoji developments and resources. Students can also type in what they want to express and find recommended emojis.
• Duolingo offers a free course for anyone to learn emoji in 5 minutes.

• Get students to create their own emoji word problems then see if their peers can translate and solve them.
• Solve Emoji has several emoji math puzzles for students to solve.
• Bill Nye has 6 YouTube videos where he explains science with emojis. Topics include the science behind superheroes and holograms.
• Students can learn the periodic table of elements by representing each element with an emoji and explaining the connection. See this example created by a scientist.
• Use emoji writing prompts. Show students 3 to 5 different emojis and have them create a story or poem based on these emojis. See my example here.
  • Eric Curts has created an emoji prompt generator to help out with this activity here.
  • Byrdseed is a free web online emoji prompt generator.
• Eric Curts has created an emoji prompt generator to help out with this activity here.
• Byrdseed is a free web online emoji prompt generator.
• Students can use image editing apps, like Snapchat or Twitter, to snap pictures of their readings and annotate them with emojis.
  • For example, students can add a next to one of the author’s ideas they like, a to symbolize disagreement, or any of these emojis, , to highlight words or areas of the text they don’t understand.
  • This post explains how I get students to annotate their readings and shows examples.
  • Edji is a great annotation tool allows students to highlight and comment on readings with written text or emojis.
• For example, students can add a next to one of the author’s ideas they like, a to symbolize disagreement, or any of these emojis, , to highlight words or areas of the text they don’t understand.
• This post explains how I get students to annotate their readings and shows examples.
• Edji is a great annotation tool allows students to highlight and comment on readings with written text or emojis.
• Assess student understanding with emojis. Here are a ton of emoji exit ticket examples. You can also download and use this example.
• Teachers can provide feedback with emojis. Showbie is a learning management system where students can submit work and teachers can provide feedback in a variety of ways, including with emojis.
  • Students can provide feedback to peer work using emojis.
• Students can provide feedback to peer work using emojis.
• Build vocabulary with emoji flash cards! Students can create flashcards using emojis to define the words.
• Students can also translate part of their readings into emoji. Emojidick and the OMG Shakespeare series are examples of literature translated into emoji.
• Here is an emoji get to know you activity that also works well for an online course. Get students to answer the following with emojis. Current mood: How many pets: Favorite color: Favorite foods: Favorite season: Hobbies: Favorite holiday: Dream Job: Favorite emojis:
• Emoji predictions- List 3 key details about any historic person or topic in emoji and students will make guesses about what they are learning based on the emojis.
• Promote active learning with student devices with Google’s Emoji Scavenger Hunt. Emojis are projected in the real world and students must find them.
• Emoji Charades is a free iOS app in which students play charades with others. Instead of acting out the topic, they express the topic in emoji for others to guess.
• Google Chrome has an Emoji Keyboard extension to use for writing emojis on a computer.
• Emojitranslate.com allows you to copy and paste text and translates it into emoji for you. This is a starting tool, but students will have to add more emojis to the translation.
  • With this tool they can begin translating modernized versions of fairytales into emoji or their own imagined stories. See this example of Frozen translated into emoji- Youtube.com/watch?v=qjycf7h4KZM
• With this tool they can begin translating modernized versions of fairytales into emoji or their own imagined stories. See this example of Frozen translated into emoji- Youtube.com/watch?v=qjycf7h4KZM

Challenge: Engage students with any of these emoji activities.

cross posted at teacherrebootcamp.com

Shelly Terrell is an education consultant, technology trainer, and author. Read more at teacherrebootcamp.com.

Are you using Google Classroom this school year? I love combining favorite tools! Spark Video is a fantastic, web-based and mobile movie-making tool for students. If your students are using Google Classroom, they can easily share their Spark Video creations with classmates before showing off their work to the world!

Spark Video is a powerful, easy-to-use video creation tool from Adobe. It’s totally free for schools who can access all of the premium features at no cost. I shared this announcement from Adobe Spark earlier this year which describes how to access the free features at your school. Spark Video works on the Chrome web-browser (and iOS devices too) making it perfect for Chromebook classrooms.

Spark Video Google Classroom Activities

In Google Classroom, you might use the About page for your class in a few different ways. It’s a great spot to add resources you want students to have easy access to all school year. In addition to posting a syllabus or course outline, you can include a Spark Video for students to watch.

At the beginning of the school year, you might create an All About Me video to introduce yourself to your students. This video could be an exemplar for a student project where they create their own All About Me videos too. Each week of the school year you can feature a new student in the About section of your class by posting their All About Me video for their classmates to view. I share strategies for these type of videos in this blog post.

Instead of an All About Me video, you might share Spark Videos you (or your students) have made that serve as a review of a topic. This could include a link to a publicly accessible published Spark Video or an MP4 upload to a movie file created with Spark Video. From math tutorials to overviews of social studies concepts, the possibilities are endless.

[Adobe Spark and Nearpod: Tips for a Must-Try Combo]

Mystery Videos

To kick off a new unit of study, post a mystery video in Google Classroom. It can serve as a teaser for a new unit of study and include a discussion prompt. With Spark Video, users can search for icons and images right from inside the tool. So if you know your next unit of study is all about the tundra, you might create a Spark Video with a series of photographs and icons to spark student curiosity about the topic.

Alternatively, you might post this mystery video in a discussion thread so students can post questions about the topic. This activity could also connect to a KWL (know, want to know, learned). You can provide a space for students to tell you what they already know and want to know about a new topic.

Spark Video Reflections

For student creators in your classroom, Spark Video is perfect for capturing reflections. You might ask students to follow a set sequence for a Spark Video reflection. For example, they might (1) introduce a project they completed, (2) share two things that went well, (3) share two things they would do differently, (4) close with a takeaway or action steps to apply to their next project.

Students can share their Spark Video Reflections by posting a link to their published video in Google Classroom. You might also ask students to incorporate these videos into a digital portfolio. This type of creation can capture their growth over the course of the school year.

Book Trailer Activity

Perfect for sharing in Google Classroom, a book trailer can spotlight a favorite book a student has read. It provides a context for their reading response and can impact the decisions of a classmate. In this excerpt from Taming the Wild Text: Literacy Strategies for Today’s Reader, a book I co-authored with Pam Allyn, we discuss the importance of book trailers:

“Book trailers require students to respond with a critical eye and for an authentic audience, thinking deeply about what they’ve read and using evidence from the text to support their thinking. A book trailer is a way of describing one’s positive thoughts about a book they’ve read. Usually lasting no more than two minutes, a book trailer is designed as an advertisement to encourage others to read a specific book. The audience will rely on book trailers to guide them toward their next book, and this authentic response to reading can have a huge impact on the student’s community of readers.”

Tips for Spark Video and Google Classroom

As you get ready to combine two favorite EdTech tools, I’ve put together a series of tips. Of course, if you have a strategy you’d like to share, leave a comment at the bottom of this post.

Spark Video and Google Docs

Have students create an outline for a Spark Video in Google Docs and share with a peer for feedback before moving into creation mode. This way students can work through the drafting process collaboratively. You can also peek into a student’s document to provide relevant and actionable feedback.

Shared Image Folder

Create a folder full of pictures you and your student snapped during a shared experience like a field trip, assembly or science experiment. Share this collection of photos with your class. This strategy will give students more options for bringing in images to their next Spark Video creation.

Digital Citizenship Connection

When introducing digital citizenship skills to students, ask them to write comments to post on a thread in Google Classroom. These comments could include a response to a video created by another student or small group of students. With this activity, students can practice their digital citizenship skills while creating a Video connected to content area goals.

Ready to jump into this must-try combo? This link will take you to Adobe Spark’s homepagewhere you and your students can sign in and start creating Spark Videos. Adobe Spark’s education page has more information about setting up students who are under-13 and accessing all of the premium features for free!

Check out these free graphic organizers to use with Spark Video.

I've had the pleasure of working with this company. All opinions are my own.

cross posted at classtechtips.com

Monica Burns is a former classroom teacher, author, speaker, and curriculum & edtech consultant. Visit her site ClassTechTips.com for more ideas on how to become a tech-savvy teacher.

One way to truly inspire innovation is to send students on learning missions or challenges to invent or imagine a new app, vehicle, machine, building, or system that solves a problem. I’ve sent students on missions to imagine a house or vehicle for people to live on in space. I’ve challenged them to invent apps to solve real world problems they face or to help a superhero. I’ve gotten them to pitch a new business or invention. These are wonderful ways to spark ideas, but we can push this further by getting students to visualize and mock up their innovations through blueprints and floor plans. It isn’t enough to have incredible ideas if students aren’t able to present them to others, plan them out, or actualize them. Teaching students how to draw out, mock up, and map out the brilliance in their minds helps them tremendously throughout their lives. This gives them the key to transforming their world with their innovations. Creating a blueprint or floor plan also meets Science, Technology, Engineering, ART and Math (STEM/STEAM) standards. Students use math, science, and the Engineering Design Process. Below, find my presentation, STEAM UP Learning, and free web tools to help students, even toddlers, design and visualize their innovations. Some of these tools even help students 3D print their designs. Find tons of my STEAM inspired lessons and resources collected here.

[Tips for Encouraging Learners of All Ages to Read]

Design and Blueprint Tools

Most of these tools should have a free version, but might not be available for all countries. As with any technology, you should always make sure the tools are approved by parents and your school administration.

• The Draw and Tell iOS app is perfect for toddlers and children to mock up their inventions. They can use the graphing paper feature and add stickers or draw on it. Students also get to record themselves describing their inventions. Discover more ideas about using this app in the Teach Outside the Box blog.
• Home Styler is a web tool for designing floor plans and blueprints that was recommended to me by Kelly Jake Duncan who teachers high school students.
• Lucid Chart is available on the web and on iOS and Android device. Get access to 2 different floor plan templates that students can easily edit. This tool also has an education version.
• Home Design 3D allows students to create blueprints and print their designs with a 3D printer.
• Cospaces allows students to use virtual reality and augmented reality technology to create virtual buildings and innovations. This tool also has an education version.
• With Minecraft (not free, but does have an education version) students can also design, visualize, and build in a virtual space.
• Room Sketcher is a blueprint tool with the ability to drag and drop furniture and other shapes.
• Art Space allows you to create a 3D virtual gallery and is pretty simple. They do have upload limits.
• Students can use this virtual museum Google Slides template from David Lee Edtech.

Challenge: Get students to mock up and blueprint their innovations.

cross posted at teacherrebootcamp.com

Shelly Terrell is an education consultant, technology trainer, and author. Read more at teacherrebootcamp.com.

PowToon

Cool presentation tool lets students turn slides into video animations

Pros: Presentations look clean and professional and add an element of fun.

Cons: Presentations can be slow to load, and the ability to add images from Flickr and other online platforms may result in student access to inappropriate content.

Bottom Line: With guidance and oversight, students will have fun making creative video presentations, but more collaborative features and classroom support would help.

[Create Stylish, Engaging Presentations with Top Slideshow App]

Read more.

Site of the Week picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed by Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best edtech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly.

By Common Sense Education

Artsonia Kids Art Museum

Online art museum empowers students to exhibit, explain their work

Pros: Unique focus on exhibiting art (vs. other portfolio tools). The companion app is great for capturing and assessing students' artist statements.

Cons: It's most useful once an artist or school has uploaded a body of work, and if students include artist statements. The website's design could use updating.

Bottom Line: A well-loved digital art museum that allows students to share work and reflect on their artistic process while helping teachers assess student understanding of artistic concepts.

[Great Way for Kids to Hone Image Editing Skills]

Read more.

App of the Day picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed by Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best ed-tech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly.

By Common Sense Education

This week I’m excited to share lots of favorites at ISTE’s annual conference. From favorite open-ended creation tools to formative assessment tips, it will be an action-packed week! It seemed like the perfect time to share a must-try combo for educators. So I’ve put together a list of ways Adobe Spark and Nearpod are a fantastic pair of EdTech tools!

Adobe Spark in the Classroom

If you haven’t used the Spark tools before they are totally free, intuitive creation tools for students, professionals, and creatives in any industry. I’ve shared Adobe Spark a handful of times on my website because it is so student friendly. This year, the team at Adobe announced that K-12 schools could access all premium Spark features for free. You can learn more about the announcement in this blog post.

Spark Video is a moviemaking tool students can use to combine voice, text and more. Students can create All About Me videos, or capture stories from their day. Spark Page lets users design and publish a website. Your students might show off highlights from the school year, or you might show off student work. Spark Post is a graphic design tool perfect for quick creation opportunities. You can use it for virtual exit slips or to capture book quotes.

All of the Spark tools are accessible on a web browser, so they are Chromebook-friendly. Additionally, you can find all three as individual apps for iOS devices. No matter how you decide to use them, these tools offer endless possibilities for student creators!

[Class Tech Tips: Classroom Tips for Biography Projects with Spark Page]

Nearpod Presentation Tool

Nearpod is a favorite interactive presentation tool that I share with educators and students across the country. In addition to sharing a slide deck with a student audience, Nearpod lets users embed questions to check for understanding. This feature lets you push out a few quiz questions, a poll, an open-ended response, or even an opportunity for students to respond with a drawing.

I became a fan of this tool as a one-to-one classroom teacher, and just like the Spark tools, I share Nearpod in K-12 settings. If you’re entirely new to this tool, take a look at my post with an overview of Nearpod. You might also want to learn more about the virtual reality features or how Nearpod fits into Pre-K classrooms.

Adobe Spark and Nearpod App Smash

I love combining favorite tools, and Adobe Spark and Nearpod are a must-try combo. On this list, I provide an overview of tips for making the most of these two powerful EdTech tools. Whether you’re totally new to Adobe Spark and Nearpod, or ready to energize your practice, this combo is definitely work exploring!

Spark Post and Nearpod

Spark Post is a graphic design tool you can use for a variety of purposes. As student creators, students can capture special moments for their school and share their learning with the world. As an educator, one way I use Spark Post is to create slides for presentations.

Last year I shared this tip for using Spark Post to create slides for Google Slides. By choosing the shape with the dimensions of a slide, you can create beautiful slides to add to a Nearpod presentation. In the image above, you can see how I used Spark Post to create images I used in a Nearpod presentation with a group of fourth-grade students. You can read about that lesson in this blog post. In addition to creating slides, I used Spark Post to create images for (1) students to annotate text and (2) a slideshow.

Nearpod does allow users to create slides right from within their creation dashboard. I prefer to make my slides outside of Nearpod, so I can have a bit more control of the position of text and images. Since Spark Post lets users search for high-quality photos and add icons to their slide, it is an excellent option for slide creation. Once you download your Spark Post design, you can add it to Nearpod with a drag and drop, or simply import the JPG file.

Spark Video and Nearpod

Nearpod lets users connect to a YouTube video or share a link to content hosted online. In the middle of an interactive Nearpod presentation, you might want to pause and show a quick video. If you or your students have created a Spark Video to share, you can add the link to the video to your Nearpod presentation.

After students watch a Spark Video you have chosen for them, they can respond to what they have seen. This response to the video can take many forms. You might decide to have students complete an open-ended response or use the Draw it feature in Nearpod to sketch a response.

Introducing a Spark Video project to students? You can use Nearpod to share a handful of examples you’d like the class to watch. Instead of launching a live Nearpod presentation, create a self-paced presentation code to share with students. Then they can take their time reviewing the Spark Video examples before jumping into their own video creation.

Spark Page and Nearpod

Spark Page is a powerful website creation tool. Users of all ages can create and publish a website that features images, video, links, and text. Similar to the strategy introduced above, you can use Nearpod to push links to different content out to students. If you’ve found a Spark Page on a topic you want students to explore, or you have created your own, you can share the link in Nearpod for all students to view. For example, if you have found or have created a page to profile an astronaut, you can share the Spark Page within a Nearpod presentation.

When leading a Nearpod lesson, students can talk with their classmates about a new topic, idea, or concept. Connecting a Spark Page to a Nearpod presentation gives students the chance to scroll through a website which contains both written and visual information on a topic. By incorporating a Spark Page into the flow of your lesson, you’re providing a moment for students to take more agency of their exploration of course material.

Are you using Adobe Spark and Nearpod in the classroom? Share your tips, strategies, or favorite activities in the comments below!

cross posted at classtechtips.com

Monica Burns is a former classroom teacher, author, speaker, and curriculum & edtech consultant. Visit her site ClassTechTips.com for more ideas on how to become a tech-savvy teacher.

As educators and students we use images all of the time in the projects we create. Most of the time any picture will do, but sometimes we're looking for an image with a special quality… transparency.

A transparent image is a picture where some part of the image is see-through, like the image has been cut out. This is useful because transparent images look much better when combined with other images, allowing you see the background or other items behind the picture.

1) Finding transparent images with Google image search

One way to find transparent images if you use the advanced features in the Google image search. Here's how

• Go to Google image search as usual at https://images.google.com
• Type in your search term and run your search as normal.
• After you get your results, click on "Tools" in the top menu to see the advanced search options.
• In the "Color" drop down menu choose the option for "Transparent".
• The results you get now will be images that have a transparent portion.
• Click on any image to view it with its transparency, which will display as a checkerboard pattern.
• You can download the picture by right clicking on the image and choosing "Save image as"
• Or you can copy the link to the picture by right clicking on the image and choosing "Copy image address".
• Or you can simply drag and drop the image into another program such as Google Docs, Slides, or Drawings.

Note: As always be sure that you have permission to use the image and that you cite it properly.

2) Find transparent images on the "No Backs" website

Another great source to search for and find transparent images is the "No Backs" website. This is a website dedicated to collecting and organizing totally free images that have transparent backgrounds. Here's how to use the site:

• You can access the website at http://nobacks.com
• Once there you can run a search for the image you want.
• Or you can browse through the categories such as Animals, Food, Nature, Objects, People, and more.
• When you find an image you want, you can download it, copy its address, or drag and drop it just like explained in the section above.

[18 Free Image Sites and Tools for Schools]

3) Create your own transparent images with Google Drawings

Instead of searching for images, you can create your own transparent pictures. One way to do this is with Google drawings.

• Make a new Google Drawing by going to Google Drive, clicking the "New" button, clicking "More", and then finally choosing "Google Drawings".
• When the drawing opens up you will notice the background has a checkerboard pattern. This means that it is transparent.
• You can now insert anything you want onto the canvas through the "Insert" menu.
• This can include other images, shapes, text boxes, word art, lines and arrows, and more.
• Note: For more detailed directions see my help guide "Using Google Drawings".

When done you can download the image.

• Click "File", then "Download as", then choose "PNG image".
• The PNG image format support transparency, so everything with the checkerboard pattern in the drawing will be saved as transparent.
• Note: JPG images do not support transparency,

• Go to the Lunapic website at https://www167.lunapic.com/editor/
• Click "Upload" in the toolbar.
• Next click "Choose File" to upload your original photo.
• When your image loads, click "Edit" in the top menu bar, and then choose "Magic Wand" from the drop down menu.

• Now click anywhere in the background of the photo and Lunapic will select a portion of the background based on the color.
• Next click the "Cutout" button to remove the selected area of the background and replace it with transparency.
• If some areas of the background are still left, click "Crop Another Area" and repeat the process as many times as needed to remove all of the background.
• Note: If too much or two little gets removed you can undo the operation and then make an adjustment to the "Threshold" setting.

When done you can click "Save" below the image to save your edited picture with its transparent background.(Image credit: PictureYouth)

Uses for transparent images in learning

Because transparent images don't have a background they can be used to make products that look cleaner and more professional. For example, they could be used in Google slides for a regular presentation, stop motion animation, eBooks, comic strips, and more. Or they can be used in Google drawing for posters, interactive images, graphic organizers, and more. They could even be used in Google Sites on student web pages.

One specific fun activity you can do with transparent images is creating compilation pictures. This is where you take a background image to serve as a setting and then insert a new image on top of it to make it look like it is all one image.

For example, a student could put a picture of themselves into an event from history, a location in a foreign country, the setting of a book, or even a famous work of art.

For historical photos, you can adjust the colors of your image in Google Drawings to make it match better. Simply click on your transparent image, then click "Format options" in the toolbar. You can now "Recolor" the image, as well as adjust the "Brightness" and "Contrast."

Conclusion

There are many sources for finding images with transparency, as well as lots of ways to create your own. These images can be used to make presentations, graphics, and websites look better and more professional. They can also be incorporated into a wide range of creative projects using Google Slides and Drawings.If you have other ideas for how to use transparent images, or have examples of students creations you would like to share, please do so in the comments below.

cross posted at www.controlaltachieve.com

Eric Curts is an education trainer and consultant with over 20 years' experience throughout the U.S. He is an authorized Google Education Trainer and a Google Certified Innovator. Read his blog at www.controlaltachieve.com and follow him on Google+ and @ericcurts on Twitter.

Easel.ly

Think critically, share creatively with infographic-creation tool

Pros: Great templates and flexible features let students learn through visual and textual design.

Cons: The site's free version provides limited themes and images; teachers cannot easily supervise student progress.

[Free 3D Design Resource Includes Lessons, Collaboration]

Bottom Line: Even though the basic themes and images are limited, when prepared well, this tool can help students connect with content in a meaningful way.

Read more here.

App of the Day picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed by Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best ed-tech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly.

By Common Sense Education

Schools, teachers and learners struggle with challenges in many shapes and forms when it comes to digital portfolios.

Digital Portfolio Challenges

When I work with schools, educators, and learners around the world, I discovered that they have many of the same challenges in common. It seems to make no difference if the digital portfolio owner is a student or a professional educator. The challenge is about:

• analog vs. digital writing
• seeing digital portfolio work as additional work to “curriculum work”
• visual communication and ethical use of images
• being open and transparent to an authentic global audience
• seeing branding as something beyond “look at me”.
• recognizing and understanding between display of what happened and evidence of learning through captured artifacts
• how to create a habit of consistently contributing to the digital portfolio
• finding time to create content and use the digital portfolio FOR learning

This blog post focuses on one of these challenges: creating content for digital portfolios. The content created and chosen to include in a digital portfolio can be free flowing or follow a more rigid structure. To me, it depends on what the learner craves and feels more comfortable with. The worst seems to be, when a portfolio owner feels a lack of ownership, is so paralyzed and constrained from a given structure or to the contrary, a lack thereof, that they don’t create and publish anything.

Don’t be too worried about what type of content you are creating in the beginning. In the worst case scenario, the earliest entries in a portfolio can serve as a starting point to begin seeing growth over time when compared to later entries.

With that being said, don’t create content for content sake. The content of your digital portfolio needs to be seen as an attempt in learning, evidence of learning, the process of learning, and/or growth in learning.

Let’s also think about the option of using a different language when we think about digital portfolios. A new language might inspire a different approach to content creation to fulfill the promise of these words. Let’s think of digital portfolios as a combination of a:

• longitudinal learning inventory (Holly Clark)
• curated learning journal (John Spencer)
• learning stories through curation (Anthony Devine)
• global communication hub
• visible thinking journal
• documentation of/for/as learning journey (Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano)

If you crave structure for your digital portfolios (your own professional one or your students), you can use the following categories to guide the creation of your content.

• Experiment and use different types of media when creating content
• Look at different areas in the learner’s life to create and choose content from
• Be cognizant of the type of portfolio you are aiming for and its characteristics to create related content
• Be aware of the logistics of the portfolio (save, archive, categorize, tag, link) to create content that supports the curation, organization and presentation of the learning story
• Be strategic in keeping the purpose(s) of the portfolio in mind and match these with the content you are creating. The content should be supportive and give evidence that purpose has been/is being fulfilled.
• Use reflection prompts and/or routines as a starting point or support as you create content
• Scout the web, look at blogging challenges for ideas that can inspire you to create content, read other public digital portfolios, look for ideas that allow you to connect to previous artifacts, entries and reflections,

[10 Tips for Embedding Digital Portfolios as Part of Your Classroom Habits]

Types of Digital Portfolios

Traditionally, the content for portfolios would fall under the following categories connected to the types of portfolios:

• showcase– uploading of final artifacts, best work, best achievement, outcome of a project
• process– highlights, as the name says, the process of learning. Upload snapshots of moments in time, the stages of a project, first (second, third, etc.) drafts,
• hybrid– a combination of showcase and process portfolio

When looking at learner’s digital portfolios, I want to add the following types to the mix (without excluding the previous three mentioned or the numerous others that can be found online, such as assessment portfolios, reflective portfolios, developmental portfolios, etc.)

• Classroom Portfolios: collaborative portfolio, content created by teachers and students of a classroom. Entries are tagged/categorized with individual authors.
• (Individual) Student Portfolios: each student maintains their own portfolio, being the sole author of the site.
• Professional Learning Portfolios: Educators seeing themselves as lifelong learners, recognizing the value of documenting for their own learning and the learning of others.

The content for a portfolio can be informed by the purpose of the portfolio.

• documentation of the learning journey: we all know that “learning” can’t necessarily be demonstrated with a one time exam. We gain a better perspective of the learner (and also of ourselves as the learner) when the learner has documented evidence of where he/she has been, what connections they have made, what knowledge and understanding were they able to demonstrate in a variety of ways, and by following along their process. The content is a snapshot of the learner’s thinking, ability and competency at a given moment in time.
• visible thinking: if the learner wants to make their thinking visible, experiment with different strategies that allow the creation of content to be shared with others.
• metacognition: thinking about your thinking is a crucial component in a portfolio to aid in the learner’s thought process and growth. Create content that make that thinking process visible. Show content that make your understanding apparent at different moments in time along the way.
• branding is no longer reserved for big companies. There is educational and academic branding. Who are you as a learner? What is your story? What areas of innovation, research, learning do you contribute to? What do others in your learning network know you to be a quality contributor/curator for?
• if assessment is the purpose or one of the purposes of the portfolio, what are the learning objectives, standards, benchmarks? How can the content that is being created give evidence that these objectives/ standards/benchmarks are being addressed?
• the now literacies & skills are good guidelines for documenting their development and proficiency as the learner is developing content
• when the digital portfolio is used as a global communication hub to document, express and communicate the learner’s thinking and ideas to an authentic global audience, then content creation is also guided with that global audience in mind.
• communication with parents or colleagues can be a powerful content creator guideline. As the portfolio owner thinks about how to best connect and communicate their learning for the intended audience. While parents want to be informed about their student’s learning and progress, colleagues benefit from content created in a profesional learning portfolio that contributes to their own learning in terms of documentation, reflection, resource curation and ideas.
• in-school learning: required school assignments, curriculum content related/ teacher required
• out-of-school learning: extra curriculum, webucation
• passion: What area is the learner passionate about? Could be curriculum related or out-of-school area… Could be an in-school passion based project or an area the learner is passionate about outside of school.
• skills, habit, and literacies: consider creating content that show awareness of, progress in, development of the “now” skills, habits of mind, and literacies
• over time: amplify your area of content to include a time variable.

Being strategically aware of different types of media for your content, make sure that you are not always sticking to the same type. If you are pretty text or image heavy in your content creation, let other media types guide your next content for your portfolio. Stretch yourself outside of your comfort zone when it comes to your content and media types.

• text
• images
• video
• audio
• embedded multi-media content from other tools/platforms

The value of digital portfolios can be amplified when you are creating connections between the content you have, are, and will be creating. These connections should be made visible in your digital portfolio and add another layer of learning and added value to your portfolio.

• connect to your own learning, which you have previously documented and shared in your portfolio.
• use hyperlinked writing to logistically create a breadcrumb trail of the connections you have and are making
• look for connections to other subjects. Learning does not happen from 8:45- 9:36 during Language Arts class alone. It does not represent life outside school campus. How does the learner strategically look for connections to other classes they are taking or have taken? How can the connections the learner makes to other areas/subjects be made visible?
• Not every photo, document, or video can or should be considered evidence of learning. Every artifact included as content in the portfolio should have a connection to learning and in some shape or form show evidence (or lack thereof) of learning.
• create content that make connections to other learners. Learning is social. It is not meant to be kept in isolation. Who are others that contribute to your own learning? What is the breadcrumb trail that led you to new insights, new knowledge, new ideas or have pushed your learning in new directions? Make sure you create content that make these connections and ties visible and part of the content you are creating (with proper credit of course).
• organization: How you are organizing your digital content to be archived, to be able to be found at a later time, to be able to be linked to from and to other content? Being strategic about your organization, can give you a guideline what content to create next or where holes in your content coverage are
• curation: curation of content is different than a collection of content(which unfortunately many digital portfolio content is in the category of artifact collection). The act of curation supports the act of content creation, since the added value curation brings to a collection

• visible thinking routines: Use the already established routines by Project Zero or create your own to guide your content creation according to the routine or a protocol.
• use any of the reflection prompts or routines to inspire and guide your content creation
• create content that make connections to other relevant content or the learner’s personal life visible,
• memes (ex. My life as a reader)
• book reviews, book snaps & recommendations

cross posted at langwitches.org/blog

Silvia Tolisano is a Curriculum21 faculty member, author of the book Digital Storytelling Tools for Educators and founder of the Around the World with 80 Schools project. Read more at langwitches.org/blog

If you have the time, ask students to find images to add to a project photo album for everyone to use. Be sure to remind them about copyright rules and the need to cite the original source.

Pro Tip: you can add a comment to a photo which includes a citation and link to the original source.

Document learning and the development of a project by taking photos at the beginning, middle, and end of the assignment. Use the animation feature of Google Photos to create a time lapse of the project, showing how it evolved and changed over time.

Here's an example of some books that I have read this year.

6. Share with parents

Once you have a collection of classroom photos you can use facial recognition to find all of the photos of an individual student, place them in an album, and send them to their parent to show what they have been doing in class. Sharing pictures is a great positive connection you can make with parents.Note: make sure that you follow your school's policies on taking photos of students. Most schools have a media release that parents sign at the beginning of the school year, giving permission for their student to appear in classroom photos.

cross posted at electriceducator.blogspot.com

John Sowash creates useful resources for educators on his blog, The Electric Educator. John is the author of The Chromebook Classroom and founder of the Google Certification Academy. You can connect with John on Twitter (@jrsowash) and Instagram.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but it might also be worth a thousand dollars if your school gets hit with a copyright violation claim. This happens to schools every year as students or teachers inappropriately use an image that they do not have the rights to.

Thankfully this does not have to be the case as there are loads of high quality pictures that can be used in school projects without any licensing concerns. These can include images that are released under creative commons, or are in the public domain, or simply are copyright-free. Of course depending on the license, it may still be necessary to cite where the image came from to provide proper attribution (and it can be a good practice to do even if not required).

The List

If you just want the links to the sites and tools, see the list right below. If you want all the details on each site go further down the post to find that information.Free Image Websites

• Unsplash - https://unsplash.com
• Pexels - https://www.pexels.com
• Stockio - https://www.stockio.com
• Reshot - https://www.reshot.com
• PikWizard - https://pikwizard.com
• Pixabay - https://pixabay.com
• Morguefile - https://morguefile.com
• Openclipart - https://openclipart.org
• Photos for Class - http://www.photosforclass.com
• Pics4Learning - http://www.pics4learning.com
• Flickr Advanced Search - http://flickr.com/search/advanced
• Google Images Advanced Search - https://www.google.com/advanced_image_search
• Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Free Image Add-ons for Docs

• Full Deck for Google Docs (Unsplash) - Docs Add-on link
• Pixabay Free Images - Docs Add-on link
• Insert icons for Docs - Docs Add-on link

Free Image Add-ons for Slides

• Unsplash - Slides Add-on link
• Insert icons for Slides - Slides Add-on link

Free Image Websites

The first section of this list contains websites where free images can be found. For each site, I tried to include several helpful items of information:

• Website - The web address for the site
• Media Types - The types of files the site provides, such as photos, clipart, icons, videos, and such.
• Quantity - How many images the site currently provides, if known.
• License - An explanation of the license(s), approved uses, and citation requirements for the images.
• Account - Whether or not an account is needed to use the site.
• Adult Content - In short, does the site contain any images that have nudity? If so, is there a safe search option to exclude such images? Because standards for content vary depending on age level, community, and other factors, as always please explore any site before using it with students and use your best judgement.
• Sample Image - I have included a sample image from each site with a search for the term "dog".

• Website - https://unsplash.com
• Media Types - Photos
• Quantity - Over 300,000
• License - All photos published on Unsplash can be used for free. You can use them for commercial and noncommercial purposes. You do not need to ask permission from or provide credit to the photographer or Unsplash, although it is appreciated when possible. https://unsplash.com/license
• Account - Not needed
• Adult Content - No
• Sample Image - Photo by NIDHIN MUNDACKAL on Unsplash

• Website - https://www.pexels.com
• Media Types - Photos
• Quantity - Over 40,000
• License - Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. The pictures are free for personal and even for commercial use. You can modify, copy and distribute the photos without asking for permission or setting a link to the source. Attribution is not required. https://www.pexels.com/photo-license/
• Account - Not needed
• Adult Content - No
• Sample Image - Source: pixabay.com

• Website - https://www.stockio.com
• Media Types - Photos, Videos, Vectors (clipart), Fonts, Icons
• Quantity - Unknown
• License - Free for personal and commercial use. Not for sale or redistribution. Attribution is not required but appreciated.
• Account - Not needed
• Adult Content - No
• Sample Image - Photo by Zivile& Arunas

• Website - https://www.reshot.com
• Media Types - Photos
• Quantity - Unknown
• License - You can download, copy, modify, distribute, perform, and use photos for free, including for commercial purposes, without permission from or attributing the photographer or Reshot. https://www.reshot.com/license
• Account - Not needed
• Adult Content - No
• Sample Image - Photo by Gema Soler

• Website - https://pikwizard.com
• Media Types - Photos
• Quantity - Unknown
• License - Creative Common Zero (CC0) license. Free for personal and even commercial usage. Attribution is not required but appreciated. https://pikwizard.com/cc0-license
• Account - Not needed
• Adult Content - No
• Sample Image - Photo by cri92

• Website - https://pixabay.com
• Media Types - Photos, Vector Graphics (clipart), Illustrations, Videos
• Quantity - Over 1.4 million items
• License - Creative Commons CC0. You are free to adapt and use them for commercial purposes without attributing the original author or source. Although not required, a link back to Pixabay is appreciated. https://pixabay.com/en/service/terms/#usage
• Account - Not needed unless you want to download the highest resolution versions of the images. Can log in with Google account.
• Adult Content - Yes, but a safe search is available. Adult content is blocked by default.
• Sample Image - Photo by Free-Photos

• Website - https://morguefile.com
• Media Types - Photos
• Quantity - Unknown
• License - You are free to use and adapt the images, even for commercial purposes. If you don't alter the image and leave it exactly as it is, then you must credit the photographer to use it. https://morguefile.com/license
• Account - Not needed
• Adult Content - No
• Sample Image - Photo by kamuelaboy

• Website - https://openclipart.org
• Media Types - Clipart
• Quantity - Over 140,000 items
• License - Creative Commons Zero 1.0 Public Domain License - You can copy, modify, distribute the images, even for commercial purposes, without asking permission, and without attributing the original author or source. https://openclipart.org/share
• Account - Not needed
• Adult Content - Yes (but it is clipart)
• Sample Image - Clipart by anarres

• Website - http://www.photosforclass.com
• Media Types - Photos
• Quantity - Unknown
• License - Creative Commons licenses including for commercial and non-commercial use, with attribution required. Note: Attribution is automatically added as a watermark to all images. http://www.photosforclass.com/about/citing-photos
• Account - No account option
• Adult Content - No. See: http://www.photosforclass.com/about/filtering-photos

• Website - http://www.pics4learning.com
• Media Types - Photos
• Quantity - Over 30,000 items
• License - Copyright friendly images for use by students and teachers in an educational setting. Images cannot be used for commercial production without permission. http://www.pics4learning.com/about.php
• Account - No account option
• Adult Content - No
• Sample Image - Photo by Kolk, Melinda. handsomebud.jpg. Apr-02. Pics4Learning. 13 Apr 2018

• Website - http://flickr.com/search/advanced
• Media Types - Photos
• Quantity - Unknown, but in the millions
• License - Licenses can be chosen in the advanced search under "Any licenses type" menu. License varies by item, but versions of Creative Commons can be selected.
• Account - Not needed
• Adult Content - Yes, but there is a "SafeSearch" filter which is on by default, although it is not as accurate as other safe searches. You cannot turn off SafeSearch unless you create a Flickr account.
• Sample Image - Photo by Allen Skyy

• Website - https://www.google.com/advanced_image_search
• Media Types - Photos, Clipart, Animated
• Quantity - Unknown
• License - Licenses can be chosen in the advanced search under "Usage Rights" menu. License varies by item, but "Free to use and share" can be selected in the search.
• Account - Not needed
• Adult Content - Yes, but there is a "SafeSearch" option. This may or may not be on by default based on your school's G Suite settings.
• Sample Image - Photo from pxhere

• Website - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
• Media Types - Photos, Sounds, Videos
• Quantity - Over 46 million items
• License - Varies by item, but generally Creative Commons or Public Domain. You are allowed to copy, use and modify any files freely, although the license may require you to credit the source and author(s). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Welcome
• Account - Not needed
• Adult Content - Yes
• Sample Image - Photo: Cpl Ian Houlding/MOD [OGL 3], via Wikimedia Commons

• Click "Add-ons" in the top menu bar in Docs.
• Click "Get Add-ons" from the drop-down menu.
• Search for the Add-ons by name.
• Click the "+FREE" button to install the Add-on.
• Review and accepts the permissions for the Add-on to install.

Alternately you can use the links proved for each Add-on below instead of searching.Full Deck for Google Docs

• Install - Google Docs Add-on Link
• Description - Searches for images on Unsplash

Pixabay Free Images

• Install - Google Docs Add-on Link
• Description - Searches for images on PIxabay

Insert icons for Docs

• Install - Google Docs Add-on Link
• Description - Searches for icons from Font Awesome and Material Design. Icons can be changed to any color from within the Add-on.

Free Image Add-ons for Slides

Just like Add-ons for Docs, there are also helpful Add-ons for Slides. With these Add-ons you can search for a free image right inside of your slideshow, and then insert the picture you find. Several of these Add-ons pull images from services listed above.

• Click "Add-ons" in the top menu bar in Slides..
• Click "Get Add-ons" from the drop-down menu.
• Search for the Add-ons by name.
• Click the "+FREE" button to install the Add-on.
• Review and accepts the permissions for the Add-on to install.

Alternately you can use the links proved for each Add-on below instead of searching.Unsplash

• Install - Google Slides Add-on Link
• Description - Searches for images on Unsplash

Insert icons for Slides

• Install - Google Slides Add-on Link
• Description - Searches for icons from Font Awesome and Material Design. Icons can be changed to any color from within the Add-on.

Earlier this year I had the chance to present at the Magnet Schools of America Conference in Chicago. If you’ve been following along for the past few years, you may already know that I taught at a magnet school in New York City. The very first time I presented a session at a conference was the annual Magnet Schools Conference, so this year’s trip was definitely a highlight on my list of events.

As a classroom teacher at a magnet school, one of my roles was to share our school’s story by snapping and posting pictures. Our school had a Twitter account and a blog, but in the years since I’ve left the classroom, the way educators use social media to share the story of teaching and learning has definitely changed. There are new tools, platforms, and strategies for using social media.

A few years ago I came across the Spark tools from Adobe. I’ve shared lots of ways to use these free, powerful tools. This includes how to use Spark Video with Google Classroom and how to showcase student work with Spark Page. There are lots of ways to tailor these tools to rigorous tasks that connect to student interests while promoting creativity.

In addition to the moviemaking and website creation tools, Spark Post can play a fantastic role in the classroom. This graphic design tool can be used to capture book quotes, for virtual exit slips, and lots of other ways. So what does this have to do with Instagram? Well, Spark Post is terrific web-based and iOS friendly tool for educators (and students) who want to tell their school’s story.

Creating Images for Instagram

Spark Post is a K-12 friendly graphic design tool that is perfect for educators with access to a Chromebook, iPad, iPhone, or a laptop with access to the Internet. With Spark Post, you can use a picture you’ve snapped or search for Creative Commons-tagged images. Once you have your image or solid color background, you can add text and your school logo to your graphic.

If you scroll through this page of blog posts, you’ll notice how I use a similar font, colors, and logo on each of my blog graphics. I do the same thing on Instagram too (here’s a link to my account). Schools, companies, and individuals use fonts, colors, and logos that make it easy for other people to notice their content. So as families or community members scroll through their Instagram, they’ll slow down and notice your posts to learn about what is happening at your school.

Instagram with Spark Post

In the following screenshots, you can see how I’ve captured an example of a quote from a school day on a Spark Post graphic. Users can add a logo to the bottom of their Post and use colors that connect to their brand. These premium features usually cost $9.99 a month but K-12 schools can access these features for free.

All you have to do is add Spark to your Adobe Admin Console. If you don’t have and Adobe Admin Console you can set it up for free and add your school domain, so they know you’re from a school. There is more information about setting this up on the Spark in the Classroom homepage. This month I sat side-by-side with a technology coach at a school I work with as she set up the Admin Console and she was able to access all of these premium features for free!

Why should schools use Instagram?

Earlier this year I wrote this blog post about the reasons why I’m excited about Instagram. There are lots of reasons schools should embrace this social media platform. A picture can share and celebrate student learning. It gives you the power to spotlight special moments from the school day. From guest visitors and field trips, to read alouds and science experiments, there are so many moments in the day to capture and celebrate.

You might make a plan to share one photo every day. You can also use a tool like Buffer or Tailwind to schedule student quotes (like the example above) on the weekends. I would suggest having just one or two people in your school with access to your Instagram account. Educators and students can send potential images to that point person. Then the point person can curate and share pictures straight from their device.

[Class Tech Tips: Can an App Spark Student Curiosity?]

Instagram Tips for Schools

In addition to the special moments listed above, there are lots of graphics you can share on Instagram. Create a graphic with Spark Post that includes the same information you would traditionally send home on a flyer. Try sharing student exit slips on Instagram to celebrate everyday learning. The possibilities are endless!

You can also use Spark Post for Instagram stories. Created a square Instagram image? You can still change your mind if you want to feature it in an Instagram story instead. Tap on the resize button to change your image to the perfect size. Haven’t used Instagram stories before? I share more information in this post.

Make sure you have permission to share photographs and work of students online. Although any reason is a good reason, some families decline to grant permission. This might be because they don’t really understand why you are asking for it. Giving students an authentic audience for their work and connecting with a global audience are reasons you may want to share with families.

Head over to Adobe Spark’s website to get started!

cross posted at classtechtips.com

Monica Burns is a former classroom teacher, author, speaker, and curriculum & edtech consultant. Visit her site ClassTechTips.com for more ideas on how to become a tech-savvy teacher.

• Flipsnack supports digital magazines with audio, video, text, images, links and voice-over. Quickly transform a pdf into an embeddable ezine.
• Canva (Web/iOS) also has a template for creating a digital magazine and a collection of images, clipart, and graphics to choose from.
• LucidPress‘s drag and drop publishing platform makes it easy to create a digital ezine. Students can add stock images from their library.
• Book Creator can be used to create a sophisticated multimedia digital book and works wit iOS and Android devices. There are several learning needs friendly features. To publish on the Google Play Store or iBooks isn’t free.
• MadmagZ has one free ezine template students can edit collaboratively.
• Create a class magazine with this Time Magazine Google Slides template.
• Flipboard (iOS/Android) allows you to curate students’ posts from blogs or websites into a magazine like format.
• Issuu is another free way to create and publish a digital magazine with less options than the other tools and doesn’t have an education account like the other tools. Issuu has a new update where you can share stories more easily.
• Yumpu is a free web tool for creating engaging digital magazines and flip books with links, videos and sounds. Here is a review of this cool tool.

Challenge– Get your students to create a digital magazine and teach them about being media reporters in the digital age.

cross posted at teacherrebootcamp.com

Shelly Terrell is an education consultant, technology trainer, and author. Read more at teacherrebootcamp.com.

Creation in the classroom is essential at every age. All students have stories to tell about their learning, and I’m so excited that the Adobe Spark creation tools are now available for students under 13 years old. From math and science to reading and writing activities, there are lots of ways for students to create a movie, website or graphic that captures and celebrates their learning. This post includes a handful of Adobe Spark activities for elementary students!

Creativity in the Classroom

You might have seen the announcement on my site earlier this month about Adobe Spark for Education. This free and easy-to-use creation tool is now available for students of all ages. Students and teachers can create movies with Spark Video, websites with Spark Page, and graphics with Spark Post. Each of these open-ended creation tools are available on the web through Adobe Spark’s website, or as individual mobile apps for iOS (iPads and iPhones).

Students have the ability to interact and consume a wide variety of content as viewers, readers, and listeners on their digital device. Providing opportunities for students to shift from content consumption to content creation can help children tell the story of their learning and share their new knowledge with the world. From persuasive videos designed to convince an audience to take action, to websites that capture the steps in a science experiment, students of all ages can share and celebrate their learning with digital tools.

Download these free graphic organizers to use with Spark Video.

Adobe Spark Activities for Elementary Students

The Adobe Spark creation tools are open-ended, so students have a blank canvas (1) to create a movie using their voice, images and icons, (2) to make a website using text, links, and pictures, or (3) to design a graphic that captures words and shows off images. For early learners, you can use Spark Video, Spark Page, and Spark Post in many different ways! The examples below provides ideas for a handful of activities you can tailor to different ages and content area goals.

[10 Tips for Using Social Media to Tell Your School’s Story]

Students can captures animal facts using Spark Video. On each slide of Spark Video students can add an image related to an animal they are studying. The keyword search feature lets students search for images without leaving Spark Video. The narration feature allows students to record their voice as they talk about their animal. Here’s an example hosted on YouTube all about Sea Turtles. In this post I share a range of Spark Video activities including one that combines Spark Video and Garageband.

Spark Page is a fantastic website creation tool where students can share interviews with community members. With Spark Page, students can type up an interview with a member of their community and add pictures related to the topics they talked about during their conversation. If your students have filmed an interview they can also add an audio file as a link (if it is stored in Google Drive or Dropbox) or embed a video recording (if it is hosted on YouTube, Vimeo or Spark Video). When students are finished, they will have a website they can share with other people who are interested in learning more about a local celebrity!

A vocabulary spotlight can bring new words to life and help students connect images and icons to a topic. Spark Post lets students choose one or more pictures for a graphic and layer text on top. If you haven’t used Spark Post recently, you may have missed the new update which lets students add icons to their Spark Post creations too. If students are studying geographical features like mountains, they can create a Spark Post similar to this example.

Designing Learning Activities

As you introduce this open-ended creation tool to elementary school students, you might decide to focus on activities that let their voice shine, or showcase work they’ve created in other online spaces. For example, if your fourth-grade students have typed up an informational report in Google Docs, they can use Spark Page to add multimedia, links, and more. Alternatively, if your Kindergarten students are exploring weather terms, they can use Spark Video to record their voice explaining different types of precipitation, and a teacher can support them as they search for the perfect picture to go on the background of a slide.

Promoting creativity in the classroom is essential for students of all ages. With Adobe Spark for Education, you can introduce open-ended creation tools to students in elementary school and give their learning a space to shine!

Head over to Adobe Spark for Education’s website to learn more!

Don’t forget to grab these free graphic organizers to use with Spark Video.

We're more likely to read things that are visually appealing, so if you want to get your message out there, consider making an infographic.

Want to know how? Check out this episode of the 10 Minute Teacher podcast where #NYCSchoolsTech educator, Eileen Lennon shares ideas with Coolcat Teacher Vicki Davis about her tips, tricks, and techniques to using infographics to communicate and share ideas.

Get Going Started with Infographics

• Limit the number of typefaces used
• Uniform color
• Use space wisely
• Have a focal point

Consider this...

Whether infographics are created in your classroom, school, or district, Eileen says that students prefer consuming content where they know the source. Think of it like locally sourced food, but in this case, it is locally sourced information. Students also like infographics because they are visually appealing, or if we stick with the food analogy, rather than bland and processed, graphics are the condiments that allow us to season words and text to perfection.

Check it out...

Here are some of the infographics Eileen mentioned in the podcast.

• School Safety
• Social Media Guidelines
• Innovator's Mindset

Lisa Nielsen writes for and speaks to audiences across the globe about learning innovatively and is frequently covered by local and national media for her views on “Passion (not data) Driven Learning,” "Thinking Outside the Ban" to harness the power of technology for learning, and using the power of social media to provide a voice to educators and students. Ms. Nielsen has worked for more than a decade in various capacities to support learning in real and innovative ways that will prepare students for success. In addition to her award-winning blog, The Innovative Educator, Ms. Nielsen’s writing is featured in places such as Huffington Post, Tech & Learning, ISTE Connects, ASCD Wholechild, MindShift, Leading & Learning, The Unplugged Mom, and is the author the book Teaching Generation Text.