Need Pictures for Projects? Photos for Class

The struggle to help students find safe and copyright free images to use in class projects is ongoing.  Free Technology for Teachers shared a site last week called Photos for Class that allows for students to search through Flickr and find G rated CC licensed photos for school use.   Using the search term "cougars" my results were 15+ pages of images ranging from the animals to the automobile.  All images were school appropriate.   It was quick and easy, no log ins or ads.  This site can be used on the iPad as well.  Choose download under the image, tap and hold on the loaded image, and then "save photo".  This will put the photo in the camera roll with the proper attribution at the bottom.

What sets Photos for Class apart is the fact that when you download the image the proper citing information is along the bottom of the image.  Even though to some students taking a screen shot from Google will be easier, properly attributing is an important skill to develop in our students starting at a very young age.  

8 Classroom Photo Sharing Ideas Using Yogile

Yogile is a simple to use clean photo sharing service perfect for the classroom.  To begin sign up for a free account, create an album, and choose between a couple of settings.  

Albums created under the free account status will be automatically deleted after 14 days. It's perfect as they clean up the photo projects. You just need to remember to download the photos you want to save.

Yogile provides a random URL to access your album, or you can create your own.  

With this URL others can send photos to the album using the created email address, or upload them directly from a computer.

Another nice setting perfect for the classroom is to approve all photos before they are added to the album. This is perfect if you have students emailing a variety of photos for a particular assigned task.

There are no ties to social media, so you aren't playing photo roulette with "suggested" photos appearing on the webpage while you open the website in front of your classroom.

Ideas of how you can implement a shared photo album in your classroom:

1. Primary students can use iPod Touch's or iPads to take pictures of items that begin with letters of the alphabet and email those photos to a shared album.  It's best if the teacher types the email address the first time so that the email auto pops up for all following emails on an iDevice.  Other topics could include different shapes, different colors, or different sets of numbers.
2. Students could take pictures while on a field trip and upload their photos to a shared folder.
3. Students can email photos of whatever they want, and at the end of the week students can use the photos as writing prompts.
4. Have students take and share selfies to be used during class projects.
5. Students working on projects can have people from other parts of the world take and email photos into one shared folder, rather than have them arrive in many different emails.
6. Keep a photo record of different lab experiments conducted by students from various periods or classes in a district to be compared with each other at the completion of a unit.
7. Students can demonstrate an understanding of a vocabulary word by taking photo of them or someone "doing" the word, then store the photos in a shared folder to be reviewed later.
8. Have students take pictures of iconic images around town, like buildings, parks, murals or sculptures.  Then use a shared folder to place them all in one location accessible by anyone in class.

Please suggest other ideas how you could use a shared photo album with your class.

PicMonkey Chrome Extension - Easy Photo Editing

Google Chrome Browser has many handy extensions.  One that I recently came across and have really enjoyed is the PicMonkey extension.  I like to use the PicMonkey site for quick photo editing. No account setup needed, just pull your photo in, edit, and then save back to your computer.  

A Little On Extensions and How to Find Them:                                 You can find extensions in the Chrome Web Store, which can be found on your apps page of home screen when using Chrome in a few places.  As you can see on the right, I have the Web Store on the main page, as well as the ability to access it in the lower right hand corner of the screen.   When extensions are added to your Chrome Browser, you can find them as small icons at the end of your address bar (see upper right hand corner of image).  

Once in the Chrome Web Store you can search the store by categories, by name (if you know what you want), as well as filtering by either app or extension.  Apps essentially are quick shortcuts that take you straight to a certain site, where as extensions are tools that you can utilize while on any page.  

Once you find the extension you are searching for, tap the button "Add to Chrome" and it will install the Extension for you.                                  

Now Back to the PicMonkey Extension: 

When on a page that contains photos (below I'm on Google Images), I can click on the extension icon at the top right.  It will then generate a drop down of all the images on that page.  By clicking on the small image in the drop down, I am then immediately taken to the PicMonkey website with that image already loaded ready to edit.  

As you can see in the image below, the workspace in PicMonkey has a lot of great options.  Quickly rotate or crop, add text or stickers, frames, adjust brightness...






As always, make sure that you are using photos correctly, following copyright and fair use guidelines.  In Google Images advanced settings, you can adjust the filtering to all for only "free to use or share".  We have a post on where to find this option "Free Image Search with Google".