PICMONKEY: photo editing made easy

Teachers looking for a safe, free, easy to use picture editor check out picmonkey.com.  Here are some of the features that make it so compelling for education.

1. FREE – we are all on tight budgets, who doesn’t want something great for free?
2. No account needed.  With school administration increasingly concerned about student privacy it is great to find a site that doesn’t require students to create an account to get started.
3. Effects, stickers and text can be added to photos with ease.

Getting Started

1. Take a photo on your camera.  Consider turning down the resolution to 5 megapixels or less to make the site run faster.
2. Click ‘Edit your photo’ and upload the photo
3. When you have all the text, effects done click save.

The downside of not having an account is that all edits need to be done before you close the browser as you can’t continue editing the photo the next day.

Effects

When teaching students about body images it is great to have them use the ‘touch up’ effects.  Students seem to know that most fashion magazines use photoshop to retouch photos to achieve our image of modern beauty.  The great think about picmonkey is that students can try to beautify, recolour, tan themselves with the privacy of their own computer.  Awesome!

Another effect not to miss is CLONE.  Simply designate part of the photo such as a face as the source and then paint a clone onto another part of the picture.

Overlays and Text

There are countless stickers and shapes that students can add to their photos.  Think of picmonkey as your personal scrapbook site!

Comparable websites

Still find that picmonkey doesn’t meet your classroom needs?  Here are some other sites to explore.

• Google+ – google bought picnik and brought those great tools into G+
• Aviary Image Editor – full layer editing like photoshop but online and free
• SumoPaint - Great for painting, lots of amazing brushes but slow for high-res photos and crashes.
• Adobe Photoshop Express Editor – must be good, it is from Adobe

Why the iPad is bad for education

‘Amazing, revolutionary, a new era in technology’.  The iPad may be all these things but in my humble opinion it is bad for education and schools.  Here are some reasons.

They aren’t popular.

The iPad isn’t designed to be a primary home computer.  Not even a secondary device.  Ask any student, do you want a cell phone?  Of course they do.  So, at best, an iPad is a tertiary technology purchase and won’t have the ubiquity education needed to begin meaningful integration.  The classes will be split between the have and the have not students.  iPads promote social division between students who we are encouraging to work cooperatively in our classes.

They are only designed to be a one user device.

The reason that most schools still have computer labs with desktop computers is multifold.  They always have power and have good connectivity as they are wired to the network and internet.  They are also great for having multiple students use them in a given day.  This doesn’t work for the iPad.  Take for example the email app which is designed for one user to check and send messages.

Back to my previous point.  Apple has designed a one user machine for the simple reason that the less it can be shared the more they sell.  Even at the ‘cheap’ price of $499 that would be a whopping $400,000 to get them for all the students at our school.

They promote media consumption not creation

The small keyboard is difficult and slow to type on.  Voice dictation accuracy is average to poor.  Our ESL and special need students who most need voice input, it would be terrible.  Therefore, writing, blogging and having students create projects would be a worse experience than regular laptops/desktops.

Purchasing Apps is for individuals not schools

There isn’t clear information on how schools can get discounts for bulk purchase of apps.  Check out the terms of use on the apple site.  Let’s say your class has a mix of school owned and personal iPads.  If you had ‘an awesome’ paid app, how would you get it on all iPads?

They don’t support flash

Really Apple?  I’ve read Steve Job’s open letter to Adobe and still don’t get it.  There are so many great free educational sites that are built on flash.  One of my favourite websites for having students practice keyboarding flash based Dance Mat Typing.  Why can’t I use this site on my iPad?

They are fragile

Take this as an example.  Let’s say your school uses eBooks on the iPad.  Now the simple statement of ‘open your book and turn to page 123’ is now a lesson in patience as the device loads, student find the app and opens the textbook.  If the book is WiFi dependent there is another challenge to overcome.  When the battery runs out there isn’t only no iPad there is no textbook.

Links

I’m not the only person who feels this way.  Here are some other posts to support this view

Why iPads can’t succeed in education by Liam Cassidy

Why the iPad Will Not Reform Higher Education Anytime Soon by Lindsay Pund

Thoughts or Comments?

OK, I know that this post is intentionally controversial and against common views of educators that own one (including myself).  Agree or disagree with a comment below.

The Social Learning Network

Hello to the attendees at the COTA Conference in Kelowna!

BIG IDEA for this session: learning is participatory

We are going to spend some time using and talking about how social networks, mostly twitter, can be professional networks.

Login and view your timeline

Twitter is like a newspaper in that every time you login there is a stream of text, links and thoughts to explore.  Scroll through your list of tweets from people you follow. 

Please start by posting a comment to this blog with a link to your twitter account so we can connect to each other.  My twitter address is: http://twitter.com/#!/jmcconville1000, I look forward to following you back.

Write your Bio

Then upload a picture – most people won’t follow people without the basic information.

Following others

You’ll notice right away that people start following you.  Don’t be alarmed most people find you by the connections that twitter suggests.  When it comes to following people back here are some suggestions:

• Follow people that have similar roles as yourself.  I always follow back educators that follow me.
• Follow local people that you know!  Obvious but sometimes overlooked.
• Politicians and special organizations are all tuned to twitter now.  Check for BC politicians or your BCTF executive.
• News organizations that you visit will send out tweets of their headlines with a link to the full article if you are interested.
• Look for people that don’t tweet too often.  If they are writing about what they had at the conference lunch then move along.

Make a list to categorize the people you follow such as people from your district to join the conversation.  Here are my lists.

Reply and Retweet

Now that you have a few people in your timeline it is time to send a thought, comment or response to someone.  Retweeting is a way to repeat what someone else said to your followers.

Sending a Tweet

Most people spend a while ‘lurking’ and reading other tweets before sending out their own post.  Looking for ideas?  Here is my guide to writing a good tweet.

Search Terms & Hashtags

They sound weird but are simply a way to find people having a conversation about a specific topic. Check out #Canucks (during a hockey game), #edchat (adhoc educational conversations), #bcedplan (BC’s education plan) or  ____

Advanced Skills – experts only

Use a tool like TweetDeck to personalize the experience. Twitter on your cell or other device.

Manage your followers – some tools to help you weed and prune.

Google+

Will this supplant twitter AND facebook in the future.  Google thinks so. View this video that explains how G+ works.  Unique features include circles, hangouts and more.

Looking for more?

If we have time here are some activities we can explore from my other session called ‘Digital Classrooms that Work’ at this conference.

Presentation by Brian Kuhn on Twitter and social networks.

Join the conversation by posting a comment below with a link to your twitter account!

Digital Classrooms that Work

Hello to the attendees at the COTA Conference in Kelowna!

BIG IDEA for this session: create to learn

Please contribute to each of the activities below so that we have content to demonstrate how they could work in a classroom environment.

Survey with Google Docs

Surveys can be quickly created to gather feedback from students.  They can also be created by students for math lessons.  Google docs make them easy to share and have a very graphical view of results.

1. complete this survey
2. view results – click on ‘Form’ show summary of responses to see the graphical results.
3. Notes and explanation of how it was created.  Google docs can be collaborative even if students don’t have a google (gmail) account.

Blogging as a Class with Posterous

Posterous is a blogging site that allows you to simply post by sending an email.  The email can include picture attachments, office documents, sound clips or links to YouTube videos.  All file types will be converted to a format suitable for viewing on the internet.

1. Be a guest blogger on my site by sending an email to workshop2012@posterous.com.  Test the site by including a photo, image, a link to a youtube video or a document.  Once the posts are approved by the teacher they will appear on the website.
2. View the results at http://workshop2012.posterous.com

Draw & Poster

• SumoPaint (http://www.sumopaint.com) blog post and getting started handout
• Picnik – closing soon but amazing!  Will post link to an alternative tool one I find one.
• Glogster (http://edu.glogster.com) online poster where you can embed pictures, text, video and more. Examples (The Brain, Trustworthiness)

Assessment

Quizlet lets you make matching games.  Try this Internet Safety Quiz.

Engrade is an online gradebook that has built in portal technologies for students and parents to check in at home.  See more about Engrade.

Wiki document sharing

While google docs aren’t classified as a wiki they do have the amazing ability to allow live synchronous writing.  Try this online debate.

Voice discussion about pictures with VoiceThread

Voice comment on the following pictures or respond to what others have shared.  You’ll need to register for a voicethread account.  The VoiceThread is embedded below or you can view on the VoiceThread site.

 

Thanks for reading, participating and exploring the links.  Leave a comment below.  Share a link to your twitter account or post about which digital learning tools will you try with your students?

Writing a Good Twitter Tweet

Twitter has been around for since 2006 and now boast 100’s of millions of users.  While many of the accounts are inactive, some people are prolific at posting their every thought and activity.  As an educator, there are definitely some features that I consider a good post.  Here is my list.

• Be informative - share something you've found, a resource, educational video. Sending links via email is so '1990's'
• Ask a question - an open ended question on a broad topic can get interesting responses from your followers.
• Be topical - sending a tweet during a live event. Eg. #canucks during a game to share in the celebration will be read by those at the game and at home.
• Add humour - everyone likes to lighten their day with a laugh.
• Post an opinion tweet - a word of caution here but nothing gets responses like an interesting point-of-view. Consider adding a link to support your opinion.
• Add personal thoughts – when sharing a link to someone’s blog post add a few words that ‘capture’ you that contributes to the message.  Idea from Gino.

What else is missing from this list? Send me a tweet @jmcconville1000

Thoughts? Comments? What do you like see in a good tweet?

Software for School Computers

Here is some software that we have on our student school computers.

• Windows 7 is now our standard on school computers that have the hardware required.  It has a number of built in features that help students.  See previous blog post about Windows 7.
• Office 2010 is now our standard software
• Windows Live Essentials is a huge improvement to the old photo editor and Movie Maker, see: http://explore.live.com/windows-live-essentials
• Firefox as an alternate internet browser.
• Mixcraft 5 by Aucoustica is a ‘Garageband-like’ program for Windows.  See previous blog post.
• Any Video Converter (FREE) – will convert any file format to another.
• Paint.net – free painting program
• GIMP – photo editing for free
• Faststone image viewer and resizer (FREE)
• Google Earth – for exploration and the cool flight simulator
• Scratch by MIT – computer programming for students
• Sketchup 8 by Google – 3D modeling program
• FlipBoom Classic – 2D animation program
• JING – screen capture software
• Lego Digital Designer – 3D online lego designer
• YouTube Downloader – FREE software to get videos off YouTube.
• VLC Video Player – great media player, will play almost any type of video including the FLV format when you download from YouTube.
• iTunes from Apple as a music player and to connect to student’s iPods
• All The Right Type for keyboarding skills

Feedback from other educators: Which are your favourites, what software do other schools use?

What I Learned at CUEBC 2011 Conference

What an amazing, yet busy day at the recent CUEBC conference.  As a volunteer member of the executive, this is our largest event of the year.  We look forward to and dread the rush of the day.  So many conversations and so little time.

This year was overwhelmingly positive, well worth the effort.  How else can you be in a building with 400 like-minded educators learning, sharing and thinking.

Highlights

• Keynote David Warlick was outstanding.  Although I was in another part of the building during the keynote, the live webcast thanks to UpperSports made it possible to participate remotely.  Already there is an archive of the event!
• Twitter continues to grow in terms of adoption and use.  When we first introduced twitter hashtags at a conference three years ago it was a small group who participated.  My estimate is there were 100+ educators active on twitter on Friday using the tag #CUEBC, enough that the tag become a trending topic on the live trendmap.
• Great presenters – I managed to attend a few sessions and learned from other educators.
  • Phil Macoun’s session on Scratch was excellent. Handouts here.
  • David Warlick’s session on data visualizations and infographics gave me the idea to look for the twitter trendmap.
• Sponsors have so much to offer! I know that other non-profit organizations hesitate when it comes to including sponsors but our decision on including them has always been that they offer something to our members.  Companies like Adobe provide teachers with tools that we use on a daily basis and bringing them to a conference allows our members time to ask questions and network.
• Welcome to everyone who attended who are now members of CUEBC and also to our two new executive members!

Learning Links

Fabulous learning summary from CUEBC presenter Phil Macoun on his blog here.

Feedback?

If you were there or if you just followed the discussion on twitter post a comment on your insights.