Calendar Art and Photo Montages

Jane has some fantastic art created by students in her class. I have just discovered a great Photo Montage app called Juxtaposer, so I suggested to her that we could superimpose the children onto the art work. She has decided this would be a great way to do their 'Calendar Art' this year. Calendar Art is a fundraising activity that schools do where they take the children's art and make it into individual calendars that family and friends can buy.
The examples below show how it can be done. Jane is going to get her children to dress up as Medieval Characters, take their photos and then superimpose onto photos of their artwork.

Your photo jigsaws on iPad, iPod Touch, wikis and blogs

A great way to start off and introduce your wiki/blog at the beginning of the year is to add a jigsaw using photos of your students or places around the school. Jigzone allows you to upload your own photos and embed jigsaws into your wikis and blogs. (It will not embed into Google Sites).
The jigsaws will also work on your iPad or your iPod Touch.

• set up an account at Jigzone
• Click on 'New to Jigzone'
• Click on Add Photo (Make sure that the photo is smaller than 1 megabyte)
• Click Browse, find the photo and then click Upload 

•  Click Embed/Link

 Choose how many pieces you want the jigsaw to end up as

Embed in Blogs
Select Fixed size for Blogs, click in the html box and copy the code.
Go back to your blogger page, click where you want the jigsaw to go, click on the HTML button next to compose, paste code, click back on Compose, add a label to the right, click Publish

Embed in Wiki
Scroll down to Stretch to Fit. Click in the html box and copy the code. Go back to your wiki page, click Edit, click where you want the jigsaw to go, click on Widget, click Other, paste in code, click Save and click save again to save the whole page.





How can I use this with an iPad or an iPod Touch?

Go to Safari and enter your blog or wiki address, tap on the Share button and select Add to Home Screen.

Now you have a direct link to your blog or wiki.

You might want to consider setting up a Jigsaw blog or a Page on a wiki.
Ideas for photo jigsaws

• kids in the playground
• class trips
• favourite areas of the classroom
• kids learning in the classroom
• pose a question and have a photo of the answer
• spelling words jigsaw

Artrage, Photo Apps and Art

Artrage in one of my most favourite art drawing programmes on both the iPad, iPhone/iPod Touch and the computer, and it was created by Kiwis!

Art Rage for the iPhone/iPod Touch (NZ $2.59)
Account: No account necessary for apps
Saving: Saves to the app
Sharing options: Send to Photos, iTunes, email, Facebook, Dropbox or Print

Artrage for the iPad (NZ $4.19)





Artrage has a variety of tools, different types of brushes.
The wide brush adds real thick paint effects and the thin brush paints like water colour.

As well as using Artrage for the obvious, painting and drawing, there is nice feature that is included in the Computer Artrage as well.

You can upload a photo so it appears transparent and draw over the top.
The example below shows the pencil with the photo in the background, to the right without the photo.

Drawn with pencil showing the transparent photo

To the right is an example of the other tools


How could you use this in the classroom?

Students can take photos with their camera and upload to Artrage.

• Take portrait photos and use the pencil or pen tool to outline the shapes, remove the photo and print out and finish in pencil or pen
• take scenery or object photos, use the pen tool to outline main lines of the photo, remove photo and print out, finish off in paint

Bulk upload of Photos

There are plenty of apps that will send photos from the iPad to the computer, but not the other way round. I have been getting teachers to use Dropbox to transfer selected photos but it is time consuming. I asked the question on the VLN (Virtual Learning Network) 'Does anybody know of a way/app to  transfer lots of photos to iPad but not using iTunes sync?'
I got several responses and here is my summary below. This is what I tried and what worked well starting with the best

•  emailing photos,  export from iPhoto or Photos library and compress if images are too big, email to email address on iPad, tap on the share button and tap on 'Save # images', the images go to Camera Roll

 Photosync app, costs $2.59 similar to Photo transfer but you need to download the Photosync app companion to your computer to send photos/videos from computer to iPad, photos transferred very quickly. Also transfers to Dropbox, Google Drive, Flickr etc. No limit on number. Buy once and use on all devices (iPods, iPhones)
 

Photo transfer app, costs $4.19 transfers photos and videos from computer to iPad and the reverse iPad to Computer, a little slower than emailing but still worked quite well. Limit of 200 photos at a time. Buy once and use on all devices (iPods, iPhones)

Photo Sort app, costs $2.59 found that one difficult to use with a lot to setup, some teachers would find this tricky to use.




So the free option of emailing worked the best but I think that I will also recommend using Photo sync and/or Photo transfer as well for the other choices they offer.

Photo and Text apps #1

There are many different types of photo apps available.
This is a first of a series of posts I will make on photo apps.
In this post I will be looking at apps that allow students to quickly present their photos with writing.

Halftone: (iPad and iPod Touch)
Add Effects: Yes
Text:  Speech bubbles, narrative boxes
Share: as a photo to library, send in an email

1. Take a photo or use a photo from the Library
2. Choose a paper style and layout
3. Add balloons and stamps
4. Select a font

 How could you use this in the classroom?

• Great for students who only write a few sentences

 Comic Life (iPad only)
Add Effects: No but great variety of templates to choose from
Text: Speech bubbles, narrative boxes
Share: Dropbox, WebDAV, email, Photo Library

1. Create drawings in apps such as...
2. Choose a template in Comic Life
3. Insert graphics or photos
4. Add text to speech bubbles and text boxes
5. Add more pages, add templates that are different in the number of slides that they display

How could you use this in the classroom?

• break up narratives and tell the story in different shapes and parts of the page
• use a mixture of photos and drawings
• choose templates that complement the telling of the story
• use one photo templates for students who cannot write a great amount
• create timelines
• character or plot analysis
• Procedural writing
• posters
• digital story writing

 Comic Touch: Free version has a watermark, has all other features of the Full version (iPhone version, no full iPad version)
Add Effects: Limited effects of Smudge, Bulge, Dent,  Stretch or light
Text: Speech, Thought, Whisper, Exclaim and Caption bubbles

Share: Photo Library, email

1. Choose a photo from the photo library or take a photo with the camera
2. Add Speech, Thought, Whisper, Exclaim and Caption bubbles
3. Tap on the Share button and save to Photo Library or email

How could you use this in the classroom?

• Use the photos as motivation for the writing, what are the students saying to each other
• record what people could be thinking
• great publishing tool for limited writing

Photo apps and effects #1

Some photo apps can be purely gimmicky, but they can also have their uses in education. This is the first post in a series of Photo apps and effects.

My Sketch (iPad and iPod Touch)
Add Effects: Smudge, Contrast, Photocopy, Colour, Sepia, Smooth, Canvas, Classic, Fine Pencil, Sketchbook, Pastel and many others
Share: Saves to Photo Library, or share to email

1. Take a photo or use one from the library
2. Choose an effect from below, if you don't like it, tap the back button
3. Play with the brightness and contrast and any other editing tools that might appear
4. Tap Save, choose image size
5. Tap on Save to photo library or send in an email

How could you use this in education?

This app will provide you with lots of different ways to sketch. Children can take photos of the subject and apply the sketching filters to it. Then they can look closely it at and observe the form, shape, shadows and how the strokes have been applied. This will help them for when they attempt their own sketching on paper.