What it is: Photovisi is an online photo collage creation tool. Students can use saved photos or a webcam to add pictures to their collage. The finished result can be downloaded and printed out. Photovisi is exceptionally easy to use and requires absolutely NO sign in or registration! This makes it the ideal online tool in my book. Students can get right in and quickly create a photo collage, add text, and download it. There are several collage templates to choose from, and each template is highly customizable.
How to integrate Photovisi into your curriculum: Photvisi is a great online creation tool. It doesn’t require any sign up or registration making it ideal for using in any classroom. Students can make collages to document learning, a science experiment, field trip, or special project. Students can upload pictures from their computer to add to the Photovisi. Students can add text labels and titles to document learning. Collages can be used for getting to know you activities. Students can create a collage of pictures that represent themselves and their interests. Use text to create an auto bio poem over the collage of pictures. Students could also create collages as a place to visually document their learning. Students could create “time capsule” collages that represent a period in history. Students can add pictures, key dates, people, and places to their time capsule collage. Collages are a great way to visually group items, younger students could create their own class alphabet display. Each student could create a collage of a different letter, all finished collages could be printed to create a class created bulletin board. The same could be done for phonics or word study. In math class, collages could be used to create a visual representation of shapes found in buildings or nature, angles, or scale. In art, students could create a collage of artists, a style of art, or of their own art.
Photovisi would be ideal in a computer lab setting where each student has their own computer. Photovisi could also be set up as a creative center on classroom computers. Students can rotate through the center for a specific project, or visit any time as a creative center.
You can see an example of a Photovisi collage above, I created this World War 2 collage in honor of Veteran’s Day.
Tips: Photovisi does have Google Adwords on the site. These are not obtrusive at all and are all related to photos and collage creation. You may want to teach younger students how to spot these advertisements so that they don’t inadvertently click on them.
Please leave a comment and share how you are using Photovisi in your classroom!
We love photovisi! My third graders used it in the beginning of the year to introduce themselves. You can see them on the third grade page of http://www.lower-school-lab.wikispaces.com. My fifth graders used it last year to make collages to use in their end of year personal videos. It’s so easy! We did need to sign up (for free) so that we could download our photos. No biggie.
This looks like a great tool to use in the classroom. I’ll pass it on to my teachers (I am the teacher librarian). Thank you for the tip!
@Helen- You are welcome, hope your teachers/students enjoy it as much as mine did!
Thank you so much for sharing a link to how your students used Photovisi, it is always fun to take a peek in another teachers classroom!
This looks like a fun way to exhibit student work or display student portfolios. I am going to try to have students incorporate this into presentations of their work. Thanks for the tip.
Great idea to display student work with a Photovisi!