Free Image Search with Google

It's become habit for many of us to turn to Google when searching for content or researching a topic of interest.  Our habits extend to our students, so often times we encourage students to use Google.  Although there are several other options which I'll address in future posts, I want to write about how to search Google images for "Free to use and share" pictures.

I tend to go to Google images and do an initial search first.  After the initial search, find the gear button, for settings, and click into Advanced Search.  Below is my initial search on Whales.

Scroll to the bottom and find Usage Rights. The default is "not filtered by license" and change it to "free to use or share".

Then click the Advanced Search button.

When you continue to search, be sure you see LABELED FOR REUSE.

Look for future posts on other options, such as using Flickr, Pic4learning, and other sites.  Though the best resource is and will always be if you take your own pictures.

Interactive Whiteboard Resources

Interactive Sites for Education is a great collection of resources a teacher can use on their Interactive Whiteboard, be it a Smartboard, Interwrite, or Promethean Board.

The site is organized into several categories, with each category breaking down into subcategories, before revealing several links to online resources, which appear to be ad-free.

 

For example, if you want to find pages to use in order to enhance the teaching of fractions in 4th grade, you would click into Math, then into Fractions, and scroll through over 50 sites that might work.  Click on a site and you are taken directly to a page that can be used on an Interactive Whiteboard.

Frame Artist with Templates Pro

It's always nice to come across a great app that can be used with creation activities.  Frame Artist with Templates Pro is one of those apps.  You can create newsletters, calendars, cards, magazine pages, and much more.  There are many choices within the app to embed your own characteristics on your created documents.

You begin by creating a template from a grid, say 5x5 set of blocks.  Next, merge blocks together to form your template and region. Like shown in the image blow where I've merged two sections of cells into larger blocks.  Inside each cell you can insert pictures, text, or stickers.  Yes, text may also go on pictures, rotated, re-sized, and more.  After the insertion you can format text with fonts and colors, format the cells, and format the background.  When finished share with many of the online communities, or simply save it to your photo gallery.

The app does come in a lite and Pro version.  For a limited time only, the Pro version is free.  Have students create trading cards of themselves, recipe cards for Mothers Day, magazine pages for a research topic, or a calendar page containing photos demonstrating a progression of a science project.

BingoBaker

Many teachers enjoy to integrate the traditional game of Bingo into their lesson as a nice review or practice activity.  The time consuming part of the activity is making the actual cards.  Well, now you can use Bingo Baker to make those cards for you.

Type in your words, definitions, math problems, or other identifier on the master Bingo Baker Card.  Then generate and print.  When you print you can select how many pages to create, which prints a pdf file of x number of Bingo Cards, each card being different.

Be sure to save the URL of your master Bingo Card if you want to use those same cards in the future.

Qwiki - search results in video form

Qwiki is a search engine that returns results in the form of a video.  You type in a topic, and a video is played explaining the subject. Try it out at Qwiki.com.

Now Qwiki has provided a free app. Teachers can quickly provide their class with information about most any topic. Get the Qwiki app here  

 Disclaimer – please preview content before showing to kids, as some results may provide content you don’t want previewed with elementary students especially when related to health topics.  With that said, most of the topics I previewed I’d endorse as fine in front of any students.

How to create a link inside your blog post

I’ve read a few blog posts recently and decided to create a short entry on an overview of creating and internalizing links.

Simple Steps to create a link:

Begin be creating your blog post, and write about a particular topic

In a second browser window navigate to the webpage you want to link to from your blog post

Copy the URL of that page, as this will keep what’s copied in your clipboard.  In my example to a particular post about Pinterest in Education.

Back on your authoring page, type what you want the readers to associate with as your link.

Highlight those words, and with the words highlighted find the link button

Paste in the URL appropriately

The words you highlighted should now be linkable words taking readers to a new online location

Post your blog entry

Below is an example of a blog post creating a link



Somtimes it may be nice to see the entire URL as a link, if the intent is for your audience to learn the URL lingo, like  http://pinterest.com/ .  As a rule you want to type in a word for the reader linking them directly to the website, like Pinterest.  Remember readers probably don't want to read http://stephenslighthouse.com/2012/02/08/pinterest-and-education/ but rather "Pinterest in Education"

Pinterest in Education

Stephen Abram writes about how Pintrest, the new social media craze taking the online community by storm, can be integrated into the educational curriculum.  He highlights many Pinterest resources among several categories including Lesson Plans, Professional, and Fun.  Read the post "Pinterest and Education" and find your inspiration.