Get Creative and Have Fun!

So you’ve started taking digital photographs for your students, or perhaps you’re having the students take photographs, but what are you doing with them? Check out Big Huge Labs for some FREE creative options for your photographs, as well as images that you download. You can even get super creative with student made images in KidPix that can be exported as .jpg files!

Just how creative can you get? No template is needed, very little tech skills are needed, and you can easily make items such as:

• Trading cards
• Motivational posters
• Magazine covers
• ID Badges
• CD Covers

Think outside the box with these items. They can be customized in a variety of ways, and actually used within the curriculum by you, AND by your students! Here are just a few ideas for student use. I’m sure you’ll have more once you check it out!

• Simple Machines or Geometric Shapes: Take a digital camera field trip around the school and playground. Take pictures for trading cards or posters.
• Inventors, Authors, Animals, Explorers: Download a picture from online, make a trading card, ID badge, or magazine cover that includes highlights of the person, animals, or invention.
• States of Matter: Take a picture or find one online, make a poster and include a sentence about the properties.
• School or Community Helpers: Make an ID badge; include the picture, the name, and how they help us.
• Mini Book Report: Use KidPix to create a new cover for the book. Export the image as a.jpg file (File, Export, Format=JPEG Picture). Create a magazine cover, include teacher directed content (setting, characters, etc…) on up to 17 lines. Hint: Tell younger students what should go on each line, with more important information on the larger font lines.
• Figurative Language: Illustrate in KidPix, export as .jpg file, and use to make a poster.
• Fractions: Take pictures of fractions in our world; use pictures to make a poster.
• Story Character CD Cover: Create an image of a story character (or a scene from a story) in KidPix and export as a jpg file. Use it to create the CD cover. Work with a partner or small group to come up with 3-5 appropriate song titles the character might listen to, and state why the character would choose the songs.

There’s a lot of room for creativity in how your students (or you) can use these tools in the curriculum. You could even create things together on the Smart Board if your students are too young to do this on their own.

Helpful hints:
1. Place photographs for students to use in your class folder inside the grade level share folder.
2. You may need to resize some photographs to a much smaller size, depending on the tool you use.
3. If students download an image from online to use, have them place it on their desktop.
4. After you have created your image, click the SAVE button to download the image, or drag it directly to a Pages document. Inclusion on a pages document will allow you to easily resize the image and select layout placement.
5. Try it out first, before you have students try it.

One note of caution, if you want your students to use these tools, please create a shortcut directly to the tool in your grade level share folder (or ask Ann for help). Do NOT allow students to look through the Gallery, Random Photo Browser, or use the Favorite Surfer options; there are images people have made, or pictures taken, that are not elementary friendly. A good rule of thumb is to stick to using tools that require students to select an image to use.

If you think this is something that you’re going to use more than once with your students, check out the FREE educators account information at: http://bighugelabs.com/education.php. FYI, one of the advertised features of this is the ability for students to sign in without an email address. That’s really a non-issue since students can already create items without signing in.