Tag: pictures

NASA Images

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on NASA Images3354 views

What it is:   NASA Images is a website where you can find amazing images of the universe, solar system, earth, aeronautics and astronauts.  In addition to images, you will find video and audio collections in this easily searchable digital library.  The site has a picture timeline of spaceflight, collections of images, audio, and video, and presentations created by users.  The content on NASA images is not under copyright so it can be used without express permission.  This means that you and your students can use the high quality images, HD video, and audio in slideshows, movies, classroom websites, blogs, and interactive whiteboard notebooks.

How to integrate NASA Images into the classroom:  This is an incredible collection of resources.  Students and teachers can use them to enhance any space unit.  This site will excite students and build interest around space exploration, aeronautics, and astronomy.  Create your own planetarium or journey through space and share with an interactive whiteboard or in a slide show presentation with a projector.  Students could create a blog or wiki all about their ‘travels’ through space for other students and parents to view.  NASA Images even offers the tools to build a presentation right on the site.  Presentations can then be embedded on other websites, wikis, or blogs.

 

Tips:  NASA Images is updated regularly, check back for the newest additions.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using NASA Images in your classroom.

Geo Greeting

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Geo Greeting2717 views

What it is: Geo Greeting is a fun little site that lets you type in a message and send it to a friend or preview the message in a separate window.  When the message is opened it is spelled out one letter at a time through pictures embedded on a map of the world.  The pictures are of buildings around the world that are the shape of letters in the alphabet.  The effect is really neat!  Each picture is accompanied by the name of the location and the name of the building.

How to integrate Geo Greeting into the classroom:  Geo Greeting would be a fun way to display a morning message to your students using an interactive whiteboard or projector.  Just type in your message and copy the URL into a browser to play the message for students.    This site is also a fun place for students to practice their spelling words.  They can type in their words and then click on the preview button to watch the word being spelled for them.  Geo Greeting is a great way to interest students in geography, type in a message and discuss the places that pop up as a result. 

 

Tips:  These greetings can be embedded as an e-card, sent as an email, or just copy and paste the link in a browser.

 

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Geo Greeting in your classroom.

Vista Zoo

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Vista Zoo3102 views

What it is:  Vista Zoo is a website where students can create incredible virtual tours of the world by combining pictures, video, audio, and objects in 3-D.  The tours are uploaded and placed on a map.  Tours can then be embeded into any website.  Students can also sign up for their own Vista Zoo portal that they can customize and save their projects.  Vista Zoo is also available on the iPhone and iPod touch (if you are so lucky to have a lab of them!)

 

How to integrate Vista Zoo into the classroom:  Vista Zoo would be a neat way for students to display geography learning.  Students could collect images in history or current images to embed in their maps to learn about a subject.  Teachers can also create virtual tours for students to take individually or as a class with a projector or interactive whiteboard.  This is a great way to teach geography and history, your visual students will love it!   The ability to add audio and video makes these virtual field trips around the world pretty amazing.  If your class has a pen pal class in another country, it would be fun for each group of students to create a virtual tour of their town for the pen pals to view.

 

Tips:  Use Creative Commons images from Flickr or open stock images from a site like stock.xchng for images to embed.

 

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Vista Zoo in your classroom.

Jigsaw Planet

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on Jigsaw Planet15729 views

Computer Lab Rules4 - online jigsaw puzzle - 9 pieces

What it is: Well, it is the first week of school which for me means that it is rules week.  Every teacher has to go over the rules at some point and it is usually met by major groans from students.  This year I approached rules week differently.  I used an awesome site called Jigsaw Planet to turn my rules into jigsaw puzzles.  Jigsaw Planet is a site that makes it simple to create custom jigsaw puzzles.  Just upload a jpeg image to the site, choose how many pieces you want, what shape you want the pieces to be and Jigsaw Planet does the rest.  You instantly have a custom interactive puzzle for your students to play!  The puzzles can be saved for your own account, shared with students via a url, or embedded into your classroom website for easy access.

How to integrate Jigsaw Planet into the classroom: Jigsaw Planet puzzles are AMAZING to use with an interactive whiteboard!  Each puzzle is timed as you put it together, split students into teams to see which team can complete the puzzle the fastest.  Instead of the typical PowerPoint type presentation to teach students facts, create a puzzle for them to put together and have them read the fact once the puzzle has been completed.  Turn your classroom rules into a series of jigsaw puzzles for students to put together.  Honor your star student of the week by creating a puzzle of that student, just take a picture of the student and upload to Jigsaw Planet. Put the puzzle of the student on your classroom website to honor them.  Students can use Jigsaw Planet to create their own puzzles.  This is a great place for them to study, they can upload spelling words, math facts, maps, etc.  Students will love creating their own jigsaw puzzles, if they have their own blog or website they can embed the puzzles right into their online space.  If you have a projector or an interactive whiteboard, have students create a puzzle all about them.  They can create a collage of things they like in a presentation program, take a screen shot of it, and upload the puzzle to Jigsaw Planet.  Students can put together each other’s puzzles and guess who the student is based on the pictures.  This would be a great getting to know you activity!

Tips: I split students into two teams.  Each team would complete a puzzle using our new Mimio interactive whiteboard, the fastest time was the winner of that round.  When the puzzle was completed, students would read the rule and we would discuss in depth.  This made rule day fun for the kids and much more enjoyable for me!

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Leave a comment and share how you are using Jigsaw Planet in your classroom.

Library of Congress on Flickr

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Library of Congress on Flickr2351 views


What it is: The Library of Congress has a photostream on Flickr. If you aren’t familiar with Flickr, it is an online storage/community for photos. Anyone can obtain a Flickr account and now it appears that The Library of Congress has joined the Flickr community and will be sharing some of their most popular images.

How to integrate the Library of Congress on Flickr into the classroom: You can’t get more convient that Flickr for images, and now that the Library of Congress has a photostream, you can get quality historical images to share with your class. These are really incredible photographs that will bring history to life for your students. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words and after seeing this photostream, I believe it! As an added bonus, many of the photographs have no copyright restrictions which means that it is a great place for your students to find images for projects that they are working on. The uncopyrighted photos are also wonderful for you to use in your classrooms in presentations, and as printouts for bulletin boards.

Tips: Here are some fun facts about the Library of Congress: They serve as the national library for the United States, they are based in Washington DC, they have more than 134 million items preserved on 530 miles of bookshelves, they are the world’s largest library, they hold books, photos, maps, databases, movies, sound recordings, sheet music, manuscripts, etc., they have been collecting photos since the mid 1800’s.

Leave a comment and share how you are using the Library of Congress photostream on Flickr in your classroom.

Picturing America

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on Picturing America3176 views

What it is: Picturing America takes hold of the notion that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ and applies it to teaching American history. The National Endowment for the Humanities is providing American art masterpieces into classrooms and libraries. The idea behind Picturing America is that bringing our nation’s artistic heritage into the classroom gives students unique insights into the character, ideals, and aspirations of our country. The Picturing America program is completely free for schools and libraries and provides them with 40 high-quality masterpieces, a teacher resources book, and the program website.

How to integrate Picturing America into your curriculum: What better way to teach your students American history than actually bringing history into the classroom and providing students with real ties to the past? I wish that I had the opportunity to learn history this way! Picturing America is going to bring authentic conversation into your classroom about American history. It would be the perfect use of web 2.0 collaborative tools where students can discuss the history and the art in Picturing America. Picturing America masterpieces would also be easily integrated into the art classroom or in literacy as writing inspiration. The teacher resource book is going to provide you with wonderful tie ins to your current curriculum. This is an amazing program, I encourage you to take part in it!

Tips: Apply for the Picturing America program today.

A big thank you to my friend Jill who shared this site with me!

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Picturing America in your classroom.


Photo Booth/ Seenly

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on Photo Booth/ Seenly3487 views

What it is: If you are lucky enough to have a newer Mac in your classroom, you are familiar with Photo Booth. Photo Booth is reminiscent of its name sake, it allows students to take pictures with the built-in iSight camera. If you have a pre-Photo Booth Mac or a PC you can now use a free Browser application called Seenly. Seenly lets students take pictures of themselves (even applying different effects like sepia tone or x-ray). Seenly can be used on older Mac’s or PC’s. The only requirement is a web cam. These are coming way down in price, $15-$25.

How to integrate Photo Booth or Seenly into the classroom: Photo Booth and Seenly can be used for a multitude of projects throughout the school year. My favorite project for using Photo Booth/Seenly is for character education development. I create a “How are you feeling today?” grid in Pages or Word and save as a template. Students take pictures of themselves displaying the different emotions and drag and drop onto the template. When they are finished we print them out and create a class book of emotions. This is a wonderful way to teach students empathy. Photo Booth/Seenly can also be used at the beginning of the year for a getting-to-know you project. Create a bulletin board with student pictures. Students could use Photo Booth/Seenly to star in their own stories. Teachers, take pictures of students throughout the year as you podcast students reading. The photos with the podcasts make an excellent end of the year gift for students and parents as they can see and hear students growth throughout the year. Create a classroom “dictionary” where students create definitions for themselves along with their pictures. When teaching action verbs, have students take pictures of themselves actually doing an action verb. You will find a hundred and one uses that you never expected when you bring a web cam into the classroom and pair it with Photo Booth/Seenly!

Tips: See the image below for an example of the “How are you feeling today?” templates I created in Pages. One template was created for kindergarten through second grades and the second template was created for third through fifth grades.

Planetfesto

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Planetfesto2532 views

 

What it is: Planetfesto is a website dedicated to creating an Internet ribbon large enough to stretch around the planet. Students add their own six inches to the ribbon by creating a simple panel expressing their love for the Earth and a pledge to change something small in their life that might affect the earth.

How to integrate Planetfesto into your classroom: Planetfesto would be a great Earth Day activity for the classroom. Students can create their own tribute to the planet (on paper and scanned in or in a graphics program) or choose a picture from the site that demonstrates how they view the planet. Students then type a paragraph about why they love the planet and their pledge to personally protect it. There are some ideas for students to choose from for their pledge.

Tips: Your students will be proud to be part of the “bigger picture” with this ribbon that wraps around the world. Students can share their work by using Planetfesto’s search feature.

Planetfesto has been nominated for an Edublog Award!!  Vote for them here.  Congratulations Planetfesto!