More Than Just Hype: Hypah

Sometimes, a useful resource pops up when an educator least expects it. There are a lot of tools that help teachers accentuate a concept. While casting about on the outer fringes of the internet it's quite possible to chance upon an entertaining way to add a little pizazz to instructional content. Suppose there's a Language Arts teacher who wants to enrich a vocabulary lesson. Instead of merely writing or speaking new vocabulary words, the instructor decides to display an image along with each new word. The teacher understands that her students will balk at a ho-hum PowerPoint slideshow. Therefore, she decides to use a few of the eye-catching effects at Hypah.

One of her vocabulary terms is the word hypnotic. To add meaning to the word, the teachers uses it in context.

The strange man caught my attention with his hypnotic gaze.

Next, the teacher uses morgueFile to locate and download a copyright free image that will help her convey the concept.

After some brief searching, she finds a graphic that evokes hypnotic eyes.

To increase the likelihood of capturing the attention of her students and make their interaction with the image more memorable, the teacher goes to Hypah where she can add a few special effects to the picture she's obtained from morgueFile.


Once at Hypah, the teacher clicks on an image and is prompted to choose an picture that she wants to enhance.

The teacher selects her image and it is uploaded to Hypah. The teachers has a number of tools at her disposal that will add animated effects to her static image.


The teachers chooses a starbusrt effect for each eye in the picture.


She can set the color, size, and point count on the star.


To apply the effect, the teacher clicks on the tool and then clicks on the eye in the picture.


After she's finished adding her chosen effects, the teacher clicks the DONE icon.

She's prompted as to where the image can be accessed. Hypah gives her with a link to where the image is stored online. The teacher can download the image and use it offline.


She can also post her image on a blog or wiki using the image code provided.


The finished image is appropriate for the word and phrase it accompanies:

The strange man caught my attention with his hypnotic gaze.

Is this useful? Could this resource be helpful in the work you do? Or, is it overkill? How might your students respond to this kind of technique? Better yet, should students be encouraged to use resources such as Hypah to illustrate their vocabulary words?

Related links:

• Check out other interesting effects at Flash-Gear.

An Online Graphics Tool That's Large and In Charge

If your students want to create or work with grahics but they don't have Photoshop (or aren't able to download/install the GIMP) send them over to Sumo Paint. Although it's currently in beta, this digital illustration tool is quite impressive.

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Catch a Glimpse of Learning: Screenhunter

Words are great tools for learning so much so that there's no denying that students should acquire knowledge and mastery of spelling and reading. However, images are just as valuable when it comes to conveying ideas. That's why educators and pupils should get acquainted with an image capturing resource called Screenhunter. This nifty application does a bang-up job of capturing anything that appears on a computer screen. The old way of taking a screen shot on a PC called for users to press the "Print Screen" key on the keyboard. Next, users would stop and paste the screenshot into an image editing program where it would also have to cropped, resized, and saved.

This process was very time consuming. The use of Screenhunter streamlines the capturing and use of images. For teachers and students who need to use computer images in a slideshow and other documents, Screenhunter is veritably indispensable. It's not hard to find and install the application. The steps for doing so are listed below.

First, visit the following link: http://tinyurl.com/67h66s

Click on DOWNLOAD NOW.

This box will appear.

Click on the SAVE FILE button.

An icon like this will appear on the desktop.

Double-click the icon and install the program. It's mainly a matter of clicking a series of NEXT buttons.

When the following screen appears, stop and take a look.

Unless the Wisdom-soft toolbar is desired, UNCHECK the checked box.

If properly installed, the following screen should appear.

At this point, it's possible to start using the program without doing much of anything else. Simply click the STAND BY button.

Note, sending the program into stand by mode keeps it running until needed. That's important to remember as Screenhunter must be running if it's to be used. New users often install the program, turn their PCs off, and later, when they restart their PCs, complain that it's not working when they've neglected to crank it up. To locate the program, simply look under the START menu.

If the program is running, it can be activated at any time by pressing the F6 key on the keyboard. When activated, users have the ability to use a crosshairs symbol (it looks like + sign) to select the portion of the computer screen to be captured. Unless the user specifies where captured images will be stored, they'll be saved to the desktop.

To save screenshots in another location, users can click on the Screenhunter shortcut at the bottom right-hand portion of the screen to access the control panel (it looks like a little hand).

After the control panel appears, users can click on the TO button.

Next the user can click on the folder icon to browse to a suitable folder where screenshots can be saved.

By the way, all of the images used in this tutorial were created using Screenhunter.

Want to Be Noticed? Be Funky

A big part of teaching students is merely capturing their interest. If the classroom is an engaging place, learning is more likely to occur. Good educators are always on the lookout for new means of getting and keeping attention. In addition to ensuring that content is relevant to pupils, teachers can and ought to occasionally inject a little novelty into the slide shows used in their activities and lessons.

One, simple way to do this is to use stylized images rather than photographs. Not only will this usually garner a few, concentrated stares, displaying artsy renderings of normally photographs images is an effective digital skill that students can learn and master. A great, free resource for transforming photographs into cartoonized art is BeFunky. It's easy to use.

First, drop by BeFunky. The site looks like this:
Look at the Cartoonizer portion of the page.
Click on the GET STARTED button.

Upload an image from your computer (click on the FROM YOUR DESKTOP icon).
If you've successfully chosen an image, you'll see something like this in a moment or two.
After that, your uploaded file will be waiting for you. For example, here's what I uploaded...
Click on the CONTINUE CARTOONIZING button.
To generate a pencil-like drawing, click on the SKETCH tab.
Choose your level of SKETCH DETAIL. Try MEDIUM to begin with. Don't worry about being "stuck" because you can always click RESTORE if you don't like the results.
Click APPLY.
Before you know it, you'll have a sketched/cartoonized image ready for use. Here's a "sketched" picture of me.

That's all there is to it! Why not experiment using this nifty tool. With a little practice, pupils will have no trouble using this site to spice up their own digital documents. This resource is especially promising in that pupils who want to use an iconic, copyrighted image have a means of generating the next best thing: a cartoonized version of a picture they might not otherwise be allowed to display. More importantly, BeFunky gives students a tool for creating. Learners who tinker with this resource are more likely to communicate ideas in a more compelling manner. What are you waiting for? Be funky!

Free, Lively Images via Morguefile

When teachers ask me where they can get free image reference resources for various multimedia projects, I steer them to MorgueFile. It's a site that contains digital imagery that has been supplied by numerous photographers and artists around the world. What makes MorgueFile so appealing is that the images that reside there are high resolution and copyright free!