Put On a Happy Face

Many educators want to publish student work online. However, they are hesitant to post an accompanying image for fear of compromising pupil safety. Thankfully, Portrait Illustration Maker is available.


Related links:

• Want to turn yourself into a Simpson character?
• Want to Be Noticed? Be Funky!
  

Express Yourself: artPad

Want to stimulate your creativity? Want to paint without making a mess? You're in luck. Check out artPad.

See You in the Funnies

Today, I visited a class of gifted students in the Onion City. I was delighted to hear that the pupils were exploring comic strips. As an aficionado of sequential art, I was more than happy to share what little I know of the topic. Before I left, I suggested that the students take time to visit a nifty site called Make Beliefs Comix. It's a site where kids--heck, anyone--can easily generate a comic strip.


Related links:

• Ohio State University has an impressive Cartoon Research Library that's worth exploring.
• For learners who are curious about animated cartoons, the Library of Congress has an informative resource called Origins of American Animation.
  

Straight from the Art

Teach art? Want to integrate technology? If so, you'll want to make sure you check out Art Education 2.0.

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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Get in the Zone...the NGAkids Art Zone!

These days, many administrators and educators are finally beginning to realize the value of art in learning. It's about time, too! Constructing learning experiences in which pupils are allowed and expected to be academically and artistically creative is a wise investment in improving education. For example, check out the National Gallery of Art's wildly interactive NGAkids Art Zone. It's a wonderfully robust resource where adults and students can spend time exploring the site’s excellent tools. They are specifically designed for creating online art. When combined with innovative approaches to education and interactive whiteboards like those produced by GTCO, Promethean, and SMARTBoard, learning becomes fun--almost addictive! In addition to the excellent online resources available at the National Gallery of Art is the institution's NGA Classroom (complete with featured lessons) and an Art Loan Program.

I See What You're Saying

A little bird told me that Matt Cruikshank has illustrated some excellent visual interpretations of popular sayings over at his blog, the Crooked Leg. For Language Arts teachers who have access to an interactive slate/whiteboard (things like eInstruction's Interwrite Pad, Mimio, Promethean's Activclassroom materials, as well as SMART products) and a projector, this would be an excellent way to promote student engagement. After seeing Matt's examples, students could be encouraged to create their own examples. Imagine turning students loose with an interactive slate/whiteboard and tools such as Inkscape, ArtRage (use the Starter Edition for free), TuxPaint, or the GIMP.

Via an excellent post at Drawn!

Color Me Excited: Interactive Whiteboards and Bomomo

I'm in Albany, Georgia this week attending SMART Notebook 10 certification training. Although I already know a great deal about a number of slates and interactive whiteboards--eInstruction's Interwrite Pad, Mimio, Promethean's Activclassroom materials, as well as SMART products to name a few--I've picked up a few, novel tricks and enjoyed catching up with a few old (and new) friends. During some of the intermissions between the training, a few of my friends disucussed ways to get reluctant educators to warm up to the idea of integrating interactive whiteboards and slates within their instructional practices. I've got an idea that I think will help to foster teacher and student use of IWBs. My ideas is based on this premise: people are more inclined to do something that is enjoyable.

In this case, fun comes in the form of Bomomo, an addictive Flash-based art application that runs in a browser such as Firefox. I'm willing to bet that once technophobic educators play around with Bomomo and create some lovely digital images, their fear of IWBs and similar tools will eventually dissipate. Why? That's easy: Bomomo is fun and offers users to create something beautiful.
Using Bomomo with a traditional mouse is relatively simple. One merely clicks on a tool and drags it around, generating beautiful random swirls or spots of color. The tools look like this:


When combined with an IWB such as the SMARTBoard, it's even easier and even more engaging. I believe educators and students would like employing Bomomo as a kind of "warm up" exercise before going on to more refined uses of an IWB. Even if instructors and pupils only play around with Bomomo and want to keep their works of art, they. Users need only click on the disk icon and to save the finished products as jpg image files.


They also have the option of saving their Bomomo masterpieces as a high quality png image files.


What do you think? Is this just a silly diversion or a resource worthy of use in the classroom? How might teachers or students make use of Bomomo in an instructional manner? Anyone care to offer an opinion?

Related links:
Still feeling artistic? Get in touch with your inner Jackson Pollock.