Website Wednesday

Welcome to Website Wednesday, bringing you some of the best of websites I’ve looked at recently that you can really use.

This week I want to share two interesting, FREE, online photo effect editors with you. These aren’t sites where you can find pictures, but rather where you can turn your pictures, or those of your students, into unique, fun pieces of art. The options available for images can make for some very interesting writing prompts, as well as unique ways to spice up student projects, such as Pages flyers and brochures, or Keynote presentations. Other options for use include inserting an image into KidPix for additional writing or drawing/stamping, or using the image as part of an iMovie project. Basically, anywhere you can use an image, you can use the ones you create with these two tools!

BeFunky is the first option. This tool has 21 basic photo effects to use, hundreds of options to add clipart type objects and frames to the pictures, as well as the ability to add text boxes, and speech bubbles. The speech bubbles could be used to create instant conversation between people about a topic of study or connections to literature. Saving the image is as easy as clicking a button and selecting the location. Here’s an example of an image I created using BeFunky:

The second option is a site called Photo Funia. This is probably best used at the elementary level as a teacher tool, not a student tool. It allows you to insert photos into interesting locations and items, such as billboards, sides of buildings, art galleries, stamps, money, etc… A few of the options aren’t really elementary friendly, which is why it’s best left as a teacher tool. The images you create could make for interesting writing prompts. Here’s an example of an image I created using Photo Funia:

Leave a comment if you can think of more ways to use these tools with your students, or specific areas of the curriculum where these tools would be useful.