Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Thing #10...Online Image Generators

Comic Strip Generator --the toughest part was finding an image that I liked among the so many options! This could be a great tool to use with my French students; they could look up a celebrity that they like and then write a first-person description in the bubble from the perspective of the chosen person.

Custom Sign Generator --I didn't really care for the Graffiti maker but had a lot of fun with the Dummies Book Cover Maker. Although I enjoyed playing with it, I don't think I would use it with students because of the stigma the word "dummy" might have with them; personally, I am very fond of this informative book series and have learned a lot reading them!

One generator that I would use with my students is the license plate generator. We could use it to make a very quick and easy book report. The license plate chosen would have to reflect the setting of the story and the students would have to write a very brief phrase that would describe the essence of the main character. Of course, you could switch to another story element to have students focus on. The only thing I found slightly frustrating was adjusting the text so it would fit on the space allotted on the license plate. As you can see on my example for my easy summer read How Perfect is That, my description of Blythe Young ended up "bleeding" over the Lone Star!

Image Chef --I had a hard time figuring something out that my students could do with this. I somehow have the inkling that the first thing they would do is customize a soccer jersey with their names and no longer pay attention to what I would want them to do! :) I did like the typical motivational poster format that you see in offices generally and thought I could have the students look for pictures that could illustrate the different literature themes they encounter in their reading and write a tag line for its meaning.


Happy Face Generator -- I used the first smiley face generator on top of the list, thinking that I could use this generator to have my ESL students locate faces that illustrate the character traits from a given list. Afterwards, they would fill in the comic bubble and write the trait in context. I was a little antsy because it took a while for the "smiley-faced" traits site to switch pages, which might even be worse in a big network situation...


Trading Card Maker --I created a trading card featuring my dog Raven (as a canine Vanna White!) in front of the amazing landscape in Enchanted Rock. I am still brainstorming as how I could use trading cards in class because I am not really familiar with the concept in itself. I will add "learning about trading cards" onto my "bucket list!" :)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks like fun and looks like you had fun making pics.

Mamalibearian said...

I love the image generators! About the trading cards... my kids have had the best time creating them. I've used them as research tools (much better than a posterboard) and as just plaing fun. That is one thing they go back to when I let them "play".

Katy Manck, MLS said...

I love your creativity with these image generators! Yours are among the best of our summer Library2Play bunch! Looks like your big doggie found a big rock for your trading card.

The motivational posters could be a great tool for students to create their own learning tips for TAKS (gag, gag - who wants to think about that during the summer?) or SAT/ACT [I am at a high school]. As long as we can access these sites from school (always a question mark, it seems), these projects would also be very engaging ways to reinforce Fair Use and how we can use others' works with permission.

SFoster said...

You did a great job on your image generators. Thanks for the great ideas. I really like your idea about how to use the Happy face generator for helping the ESL kids with character traits. This would also be great for all Early childhood kids!