Depending on the design type they selected, students may have the ability to change their project’s background image, color, and design.
6. When they finish their image project, have students save their work and export it or share it. Specific exporting and sharing options will vary depending on the app or platform students selected, but if possible, have them share their work by copying a URL to it and submitting the link on the class LMS.
Connections
You can apply this lesson to different content areas in the following suggested ways.
TEACHING TIP
Students can get started with creating images in multiple ways, including by taking digital photos throughout the school building, drawing images and then scanning them, using apps like those highlighted in this lesson to make images, and using a spreadsheet tool to create graphs or tables.
• English language arts: Assign students to groups, and have them retell a chapter of a book they read using only images that they create. Students can exchange their project with another group and discuss how accurately the images retell the chapter.
• Mathematics: Provide students with an article containing mathematical data related to your curriculum. Students should create a graph or table to organize, analyze, and make sense of the data. Consider having students create different types of graphs or tables to compare and contrast information. Groups of students work together using the same data, but they should create different types of charts including comparison and relationships, composition, distribution, or a word cloud.
• Science: When students learn the periodic table, discuss with them the basics of the periodic table groups (noble gases, transition metals, and so on). Students can create images that provide visual representations of the differences between the groups.
• Career and technical education: In design class, have students draw a floor plan of a room using specific dimensions and details that include windows and doors. Next, students should furnish their room to scale. This is the start of a unit that will grow in sophistication to later become a three-dimensional model of a home.
Wow: Annotating and Enhancing Images
Learning goal:
I can enhance images by annotating them and making them interactive.
As students become more sophisticated at using imagery to communicate their learning, they can explore more advanced ways to manipulate images and create more complicated visuals. Advanced image manipulation can involve an infinite variety of elements, from creating simple annotations to adding interactive elements like web links to external content or creating cool new products like special effects on photos or original comic strips. Students can even use more than one app or tool to manipulate the same image or images.
For annotation purposes, have students explore tools such as ThingLink (www.thinglink.com) and Annotable (http://moke.com/annotable). These tools let users import images and tag them with links to webpages, text, and videos that others can view by clicking on those annotations. For more evocative ways to shake up students’ use of imagery, introduce them to tools like Comic Life (http://plasq.com/apps/comiclife/macwin), PicMonkey (www.picmonkey.com), and Evernote (https://evernote.com). These tools let students do everything from create comic books to fix up photos and add special effects to them or annotate a PDF.
Process: Manipulating Images
Use the following five steps to teach students how to annotate and manipulate digital images.
1. Instruct students to locate or create an image to explain a unit topic to a classmate. Once students have the base image, they will further manipulate it to clarify how the image connects to the content.
2. Have students add annotations to the image using text boxes that either highlight something important about it or explain their learning on a topic.
3. Have students make the images interactive by adding links to them that point to external content, such as webpages or videos.
4. As a separate product, or as an enhancement to the current one, have students use a specific tool to apply special-effects filters to their work or create a specialized visual product (like a comic strip). Remember, the ultimate goal is for students to enhance images in visually interesting ways that also demonstrate their learning.
5. Have students share their final products through the classroom LMS and then, before an assessment, work with a partner to exchange images and discuss the unit content.
Connections
You can apply this lesson to different content areas in the following suggested ways.
TEACHING TIPS
• English language arts: Give students a short story or fable. Have them use the graphic-novel format to recreate the story using images. The annotations students place over the base image should provide clarification, and the inserted hyperlinks should link to websites to provide additional information and make the images interactive.
• Mathematics: In a unit covering maximizing area, have students illustrate the situation of a given problem by drawing a picture of what they maximize, and then have them annotate it with a mathematical solution to the problem.
• Social science: Review with students the key reasons why the United States chose to become involved in World War II. Have student groups collaborate to select or create images to which they can apply special-effects filters that retell the story of U.S. involvement.
• Career and technical education: In woodshop class, have students snap a picture of a piece of equipment and then annotate key things to remember about its special features or safety guidelines. After having students share the images using the classroom LMS, print the pictures and post them in the shop as safety reminders. If you have a class website, post the images there to maintain any interactive elements such as links to external resources.
Using Video to Demonstrate Learning
No matter what topic we teach, we all know one thing about our students—they love to watch videos. It doesn’t matter whether they come from YouTube
