NOW Classrooms, Grades 6-8. Meg Ormiston

goal:

      I can incorporate appropriate images into a project.

       Novice: Using Pictures in Projects

      Images can enhance a lesson or project and bring material to life. Knowing how to effectively use appropriate images in projects will benefit students throughout their education and beyond. Appropriate images are ones that are relevant, high quality, and enhance the content’s meaning. For example, adding data-derived charts to a report can help audiences more easily understand the data a student collects. This lesson also gives you an opportunity to ensure students understand copyright with regard to photos and images found online. Google Images (https://images.google.com) includes a Usage Rights filter under its Tools menu. We also list several copyright-free image resources in chapter 5 in the lessons for Engaging in Legal and Ethical Behaviors Online (page 123).

      Students can use a variety of project-design apps and services to include pictures in their work, such as Tackk (https://tackk.com), Canva (www.canva.com), and Adobe Spark (https://spark.adobe.com). For this lesson, we recommend Canva, a web-based and iOS design program that allows users to make posters, brochures, presentations, and other printed materials. It requires students to sign in with a school G Suite email address or another school email address, and it is free to use, with optional premium features. If you prefer, you can adapt this process for use with a variety of other free and premium design apps.

       Process: Designing a Picture Project

      Use the following seven steps to help students design a simple picture project.

      1. Have students select an app or website to use to create their picture project. If you choose an app for students to use, make sure you introduce students to its user interface and basic features and functions.

      2. Ask students to start a new design project and choose a design type or theme. Designs in presentation and poster categories are ideal because they scale onto 8.5- × 11-inch paper.

      3. Have students choose to either use a premade layout or start a design of their own.

      4. Tell students to experiment with different design elements by adding shapes, grids, frames, and photos to their project. They should also customize these elements to adjust their size, color, and location on the page.

      5. Have students add text elements of different sizes and fonts.

      6. Depending on the design type they selected, have students change their project’s background image, color, or design.

      7. When they finish their picture project, have students save their work and submit it through the classroom LMS. Specific exporting and sharing options will vary depending on the app or platform you selected.

       TECH TIPS

       Many project-design apps let users insert Internet-based images using their URLs. This makes Creative Commons image search (https://search.creativecommons.org) a great source for locating copyright-free pictures to use in this lesson. Students simply select Google Images as the search option, enter a search, and select a picture in their search results. After they select a picture, they click the View Image button and copy the resulting URL from the web browser’s address bar into the app.

       Images with greater pixel dimensions, or higher resolutions, usually are better quality. A 1600- × 800-pixel image generally is much higher quality than one with a lower resolution, like 200 × 100 pixels. Google Images shows an image’s resolution when the user selects the image, as do most design apps via an Image Properties or similar link.

       Connections

      You can apply this lesson to different content areas in the following suggested ways.

      • English language arts: After reading a story, have students choose a favorite quote from its protagonist and then use an image-creation app to create a visually pleasing version of it. Students should choose a quote that focuses on character development and change.

      • Mathematics: Ask students to use a presentation app to create a slideshow that explains tessellation or another mathematics concept. Their presentation should include tessellation pictures to demonstrate their learning. Presentation apps like PowerPoint (https://products.office.com/en-us/powerpoint), Keynote (www.apple.com/keynote), and Google Slides (www.google.com/slides/about) provide excellent image-creation tools for this project.

      • Social science: Have students create a newspaper article about a famous person in history, inserting appropriate images to supplement the text.

      • Science: Instruct students to create an evolutionary timeline of species using related images and text.

      • Art: Have students use a design platform like Canva or Tackk to create a poster about an artist or art period, inserting their own images with descriptions.

      Learning goal:

      I can create interactive images that incorporate web links, text, and videos.

       Operational: Annotating and Adding Links to Images

      In order to create a coherent multimedia project, students must be able to think critically about the various pieces that they will include in the final product. This higher-order thinking process helps them create a unique message that they use to share their ideas with others. Students can use web and mobile apps several ways to connect different media pieces in a final product they can share with both peers and a wider audience.

      You can use plenty of apps for this lesson, including Skitch (https://evernote.com/products/skitch) and Google Slides (www.google.com/slides/about). We recommend ThingLink (www.thinglink.com), a website where users can import images and tag them with links to webpages, text, and videos that others can view by clicking on those annotations. To use ThingLink, students must create an account with a school Gmail address or another school email address.

       Process: Adding Links and Annotations to an Image

      Use the following seven steps to teach students how to add links and annotations to an image.

      1. Have students select an annotation app and start a new project.

      2. Instruct students to choose an image from their device, from a website or a search, or from their social media account—such as Facebook (www.facebook.com) or Flickr (www.flickr.com)—and import it to their project.

      3. Have students select an area of the image where they want to add a link to a webpage, a video, or text.

      4. When a pop-up window or similar element appears with a data field, students should enter a web address, paste a video link, or type plain text into it.

      5. Have students save the new annotation as part of the image. Most annotation tools place a special icon where students place the annotation.