Thing 12 - Fun and Scary Photos!

I made a decision to pick one type of tool and explore how it works on multiple sites, so I went on an adventure with dumper.net, befunky.com, and picnik.com using photos from my childhood. Well I am in love with all three now! dumper.net allowed me to showcase my photo in a different way, like putting it in a jigsaw puzzle or rubix cube. I chose to display my brother Chris and I at the petting zoo in a musuem.

Now all those fake people can forever observe our cuteness!

I must say that I had the most fun with befunky.com!  It has more editing options that the user can control besides just putting the image in different sceneraios.  befunky allows you change the style of the image (cartoon, pointillism) and color of the image.  The image below is of my brother and I playing as youngins (I  used Holgaart for the effect, with some color changes and a different border).  I am calling it "An Out of Body Experience."

This is my favorite image out of all of the ones I tried!  I even sent it to my brother and he would like a framed copy for his birthday! :)

The last free photo editor website I went to was picnik.com.  I had heard of it before, but I had never gone exploring before.  This site was very similar to befunky, but had slightly different choices.  This time I chose to auto-fix the photo (it is from the 80's...need some help!), crop it,  and to make it look like it was taken at night with the Night Vision effect.  I also changed the photo slightly by making it look like it was taken with a Polaroid camera.  I am calling this one "The Haunting of an embarassed 6 year old."

I showed all these images to my mother and she now thinks I watch too many horror movies!  I had a blast and think that all family photos will be turned into fun soon!

I have not had many lightbulb ideas on how to use these websites in my classroom.  They will make a nice addition to projects, but I cannot think of something that would spot light them.  I do not really need a scary photo of matter for my lessons.  I do think the students will like them and have fun, but it is not a crucial part of their education.  The basic features of cropping and red eye could come in handy though.  I could assign a photo project of the different types of matter and the students could take the pictures and then edit them any way they want...hmmmm.

Since I would not be using these as a whole group activity, the management of the tools would be quite simple.  I had no problem figuring out how they worked, so a basic demonstration of how each website works and is different would be needed, but then the kids could go out on their own to explore.  The only website that would be difficult is picnik.com since they promonately display their upgrade options (from free to fee), but having a discussion about how you do not need to pay for what is already free could help out.  All three sites are accessible from school, so we could all do this in the computer lab together, which could help with the management of the tools.  I think until I come up with a solid use for these sites in my classroom, I will not fully understand what I am getting myself into.  Hopefully the lightbulb moment will come soon because I had way too much fun!