Tag:

photos

Try It On: An AI Tool for Stunning Headshots

by Lori Gracey June 5, 2023

written by Lori Gracey

I’ve had a few headshots taken in my career. Most of the time, they look serious, professional, and, to be honest, a little stuffy. But those days are gone! I just tried a new artificial intelligence tool that lets you upload photos of yourself, and it creates amazing headshots for you from them. TCEA President Mindi Vandagriff shared Try It On with the board recently, and I just had to give it a try. I normally hate having my picture taken, so this seemed less painful than sitting in front of a camera. And it really was.

How does Try It On work?

You enter the “studio” for your “photo shoot” and begin uploading 10 to 20 photos of yourself. They have specific requirements about the size of the photo, not including anyone else, not including your hands (we know the problem that AI has with hands), and such. But they accepted almost all of my photos with no problem. Also, you can easily crop them inside the program. Once you’ve uploaded all of your photos, your work is done and the AI takes over. You’ll get an email saying the photoshoot was a success and you can see your shots. The platform says it takes 24 hours to generate the images, but I got mine back in just two hours.

How much does Try It On cost?

For $17, you get a minimum of 100 photos (I got 112, for some reason; yay, me!). You can view all of the photos that have been generated for you and download them. For customers who want an extra human touch on their portraits, they offer human editing at $10 a portrait.

Image of three steps to get headshots through Try It On, an AI tool for generating headshots. — Visit **Try It On** to learn more.

My Try It On Results

Ready to see some of my headshots?

Five headshots of Lori Gracey, TCEA's executive director, that were generated by Try It On.

Yes, the site did make me look a little bit younger than I normally look. And it added more makeup than I normally wear. But I do think that the photos work, and I could use some of them as my professional headshot. What do you think?

Potential Drawbacks

Some potential drawbacks of this site include that I am not sure who else can see these photos. But their privacy policy does say “Once we generate your headshots, you will have the ability to permanently delete them from our servers in order to maintain your privacy.” So, I can download them for myself and then delete them. Also, some of the images that were created of me (and that I didn’t share with you) are a little risqué. Nothing too offensive, but they were not images I would use professionally.

I had a lot of fun using this AI tool for generating headshots. I realized that I don’t have a lot of photos of me (not surprising, since I, like most of you, am usually the one taking the photo). And my husband really enjoyed the results. Let me know if you try this and how it turns out for you!

June 5, 2023 4 comments

Google Tips and Tricks

TCEA Responds: Sharing School Photos

by Miguel Guhlin September 13, 2018

written by Miguel Guhlin

Dear TCEA Responds:

How can I take photos of my students and easily display them on my Google Site with the least amount of touches? What’s the best or easiest workflow?

-Catarina

Dear Catarina:

Thank you for the opportunity to share two of my favorite tools, Google Drive and the new Google Sites. Combining these two makes it easy to share images with others, even from your mobile device. Let’s explore the unique aspects of each tool before combining them.

Here’s the process we are going to use to take advantage of these two tools.

Three-Step Process to Share Images

The process is quite simple and will become familiar to you in time.

Snap pictures. Use your preferred device (e.g. smartphone, tablet, digital camera) to capture images.
Put photos in Drive. Use the Google Drive app on the smartphone/tablet to save pictures to a photo folder in Google Drive. If you are using a digital camera, put the pictures in your Google Drive folder.
Publish your Drive photos. In Google Sites, you can insert a folder (e.g. Photo Gallery) as a grid rather than a list.

Let’s go through the steps.

#1 – Snap Pictures

Snap some photos of a school event. If you are using a smartphone or tablet, you can load the Google Drive app on your device. Then follow instructions in Step #2. If you are using a digital camera, copy the image files to your computer and then put them in Drive via the web interface.

Let’s take a quick look at how to put photos in Google Drive via the Drive app. Use one of the links below to get the app for your device.

#2 – Put the Photos in Drive

Here’s what this looks like on an iPad, but the process is similar on Android. When you open the Google Drive app on your computer, you will be able to open a folder in Drive. You can create a new folder or navigate to the folder you want (e.g. PhotoGallery in this example).

If you select the plus symbol, you are able to save pictures/videos from your devices image gallery (e.g. Camera Roll or Gallery). It will look like this:

Select the UPLOAD button shown. This will, if it is your first time using Google Drive, require you to grant permission to access your device’s photo gallery. Once that is done, you can select multiple images.

Select the photos you want to put in Google Drive, as shown in the image below:

Once the pictures have been placed in the Google Drive folder you specified, you can view the photos on Google Drive:

Now that the images are in your Google Drive, we’re ready to move to the next step.

#3 – Publish Your Drive Photos

To display the photos in your Google Drive folder (e.g. PhotoGallery, the name of the folder in this example), you will need to create a new Google Sites. The new Google Sites make it easy to insert and display the contents of a Google Drive folder.

When you insert a Google Drive folder (e.g. PhotoGallery), you will get a list of folders in your Google Drive. Select the PhotoGallery folder (or whatever you called it):

Once done, you will see a list of files appear in your Google Sites page.

This is not very appealing. Click on the Settings button (upper left hand corner, center button resembling a gear) to switch the view to grid view.

Once you switch the view to “Grid View,” select Done. The results will be more appropriate for photos. Here’s what it looks like:

When you add new pictures to your Google Drive folder where you house photos, new pictures will automatically show up in your Google Sites page. Have a lot of pictures? You can enlarge the photo grid by resizing it (use the convenient handles in each corner of the embedded folder). You can even make the photo grid smaller. A scroll bar will appear to facilitate end users viewing photos. At any point, they can click and open the folder in Google Drive with view rights only.

TCEA Responds: Sharing School Photos

That’s all there is to sharing photos. If you share your Google Drive folder where you are storing the photos with others, they can also add photos from their devices.

September 13, 2018 0 comments

Exploring Google Photos as a Collaborative Tool

by Miguel Guhlin August 13, 2018

written by Miguel Guhlin

“What’s the best way to collect and share photos for my journalism class?” a high school journalism teacher asked me. The answer, without a second thought, was, “I’m not sure.” A few years later, a middle school journalism teacher asked me the same question. “I’m not sure. I could rig up an FTP solution. A PHP-based photo gallery would make it easy to share images via the web.” The question always arose though, “Why can’t I use Flickr?” Now, however, you can use Google Photos within the G Suites for Education to get the job done. It’s so easy. Let’s explore Google Photos as a tool for capturing and sharing images. Of course, Google Photos can do so much more.

Exploring Google Photos as a Collaborative Tool

If you’re not using Google Photos to back up your photos to the cloud, you need to consider using it. Most cloud storage solutions (e.g. OneDrive, Dropbox) offer quick back up of photos to the cloud. The nice thing is that Google Photos offers unlimited storage. If you have a school district G Suite for Education account, then use Google Photos. It works great as a collaborative tool to back up and share pictures. Let’s explore some tips (view a detailed feature list).

Tip #1 – Back Up Personal Photos and Free Up Space

Ready to take school-related pictures with your personal smartphone? Let’s take a few steps to avoid confusion down the road.

Note: If you are using a school-owned iPad or Android tablet, then you can ignore this tip. You need to use your G Suite for Education account on that device.

First, make sure to add the Google Photos app to your smartphone. Second, log in with your G Suite for Education account. You may have to click on manage accounts to add your G Suite for Education account. You can be log in with many accounts.

To clear your phone of personal images with a backup your personal images, begin with step #1 below:

Clear your phone of personal images. The easiest way is to have the Photos app back up all photos you take on that device to the cloud. When the process is complete, move to step #2.
Select the option to “Free up space.” This action will remove images from your phone AFTER the app backs them up. You can double-check. Go to the Google Photos app on your phone and view your images there.
Still not sure? Go to http://photos.google.com and you will see your images there.
Go to the Google Photos app and log in with your G Suite for Education account.
Set your G Suite for Education as the account to back up photos to.
Now you are ready to take school-related pictures.

All done? Let’s begin with Tip #2 below to snap pics of school events.

Tip #2 – Snap Pics of School Events

Now that you have set your device to back up new photos to your G Suite for Education account, take lots of pictures. As you take pictures, Google Photos will back up your snapshots as bandwidth allows (e.g. WiFi). You can choose to back up pictures when you are on WiFi or using your phone’s network provider (e.g. AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint). On the Photo app, go to “Settings” and then choose “Back up & sync”. You will see that you can turn cellular data to back up on or off.

The highlighted section refers to Cellular Data on/off for photos/videos, as well as roaming (good to know if you are at a football game in outside your cellular coverage area)

If you are capturing video, make sure to turn your smartphone or tablet sideways. This will ensure your videos will not need post-event editing. If you forget to turn your device sideways during video recording, there’s an easy fix. The Google Photos app offers the option of flipping your video sideways. How cool is that? Read Simple Video Tricks Tip #3 to learn how.

Google Photos makes editing via your web browser easy. It offers red-eye reduction, cropping, image rotation, and more.

Tip #3 – Create Photo Albums

“Could you take pictures of the awards ceremony?” asks your superintendent one evening at a board meeting. Your smartphone is the only thing you have available. “Sure,” you reply. “I can do it. Would you like me to share the photo album with you?”

With Google Photos, you can drop photos into an album. This makes it easy to share photos via a link with others. As you can see from the options available, you can do more than create an album or shared album others can add to. More options include:

Animation – Take any series of photos and display them as an animation, like an animated GIF. You can’t change the speed of the animation like you can with GIFmaker.me. View an example of a Google Photos animation.
Collage – Create a simple collage of two to nine photos.
Photo book – Create a printable photo book of a particular set of photos.

As mentioned earlier, you can create a Shared Album in Google Photos that others can add to. Like a regular album, select the photos you want to share as an album or shared album. A shared album allows others, such as a select group of students or team members, to also add pictures. A regular album is one you create and then you can share the link to.

Explore these features. One of the best aspects of Google is that you can take that link and share it. You can do that off your mobile device or online. Isn’t that amazing?

Click the SHARE button in the top right (yellow highlight) to see all the options possible

Tip #4 – Drop Photos into Google Drive

You can display Google Photos in Google Drive with a settings change in Google Drive. Enable that change with these steps:

Organize photos and videos using Google Drive

On your computer, open drive.google.com.
Click Settings.
Check Create a Google Photos folder.
Click Done.

Once Google Photos appear in Google Drive, you can see the photos in Google Drive. Google organizes these photos/videos according to Year and Month:

Having access to your Google Photos makes it easy for you to copy your photos to specific folders in Drive. That’s important because you can use that to organize and share the way you want to.

Tip #5 – The New Google Sites

The new Google Sites offers many great features. You can make it a virtual meeting space to showcase exciting events. It makes embedding Google Photos in your Google Drive on a Sites web page easy. You can embed documents, videos, and images. Place animated photos into a Google Sites page. Here are two ways to view Google Photos images that are saved to Google Drive. You can view the new Google Sites setup to show these off.

Approach #1 – Embedded Picture Slide Show

In this example, to view the slideshow, you must click the image shown.

Approach #2 – Grid view of images

In this example, to view the images, you scroll down to see images.

See this in action in this new Google Sites.

A Final Tip

As mentioned, Google Photos on the web offers additional features. My favorite options include auto correct on lighting, crop, and/or flip or rotate an image. Isn’t Google Photos on the web amazing?

August 13, 2018 0 comments

Good Teaching Microsoft

Windows 10 Fall Creators Update: Moviemaker Lives

by Miguel Guhlin November 11, 2017

written by Miguel Guhlin

Are you a storymaker? If so, you will want to take a hard look at Windows 10’s Photos app. In its Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, Microsoft has finally unveiled the feature-rich Story Remix TCEA reported on earlier this year. “The reimagined Photos app makes it easy to tell your story in video with a soundtrack, transitions, 3D effects, and Windows Ink,” says the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update website. Rather than a separate app, Story Remix is built into the Photos app.

Become a Storymaker

“There are so many different ways lives work out, so many stories, and every one of them is precious: full of joy and heartbreak, and a fair amount of situation comedy,” says Texas novelist Sean Stewart. How can we communicate these stories with a larger audience? Children are swapping stories online via YouTube. Whether we like the content of the stories they swap or not, we can celebrate the fact that these children are becoming familiar with the language of images and sound. So, with that in mind, how can we enhance story swapping in such a way that we take advantage of this media-rich language our children are using online?

There are many tools available online that teachers can use to accomplish this. One tool that many have missed is Microsoft’s Moviemaker. Learn more online about becoming a storymaker.

About the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update

With the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, the Photos app offers built-in features that facilitate video creation and sharing. Get a detailed walk through online. The Windows 10 Photos app offers an easy-to-use feature set reminiscent of PhotoStory more than MovieMaker. Still, it offers a wonderful tool for creating videos of still photos and adding audio, filters, and other effects.

The re-imagined Photos app makes it easy to import photos, arrange them in sequence, and add special effects. Then you can export the video as an MP4. This video format can easily be hosted on YouTube and other online locations.

One Example

To explore the features, I combined a few pictures and made them into a video. The process was simple.

Source of Featured Images: TCEA Technology Leadership Summit, which took place on October 11, 2017 in Austin, Texas

Video Overview of Photos:

A New Generation of Hobbyists

“Digital storytelling begins,” says Joe Lambert, co-founder of the Center for Digital Storytelling, “with the notion that in the not [too] distant future, sharing one’s story through the multiple mediums of digital imagery, text, voice, sound, music, video, and animation will be the principal hobby of the world’s people.” As our world becomes more connected through the internet, the importance of learning to use digital tools to share your ideas, your vision, and your stories becomes all the more critical. Microsoft’s revised Photos app makes this all the more possible.

November 11, 2017 0 comments

iOS Tips and Tricks Technical Support

Free Up Space on Your iDevices

by Peggy Reimers November 2, 2017

written by Peggy Reimers

In helping a hospitalized friend try to watch television on her iPad, I was stopped short. We deleted as many images, videos, and songs as we could, but we still needed more space. Who do you call? In this case, we did not call Ghostbusters, but Apple Support. A BIG shout out to Kareem who opened up my eyes to another way images hog space on our iDevices.

Did you know that when you take pictures through the Messages app, these images are saved to your device forever? By default, your Keep Messages is set to forever. To change that (and you should, to free up valuable space), go into Settings, then Messages, and then Message History. There, change it from the default of Forever to 30 days. This will get rid of the messages, but not the images you send in them.

Here is the answer to the big question on how to delete the images you take in Messages.

Delete your Messages Images

Open up the Messages app.
Choose the contact.
Tap on the i (upper right corner)
Long press on a photo.
Tap on More.
Select one or more photos to delete*

*You can also save one or more images to your camera roll, if you prefer.

In discussing this great find with my colleague, Miguel Guhlin, he offered three more AWESOME TIPS to help you manage photos on your iDevice.

Cloud Storage

Did you know you can use Microsoft Onedrive and/or Google Drive to record and store videos and photos you take straight to the cloud? Yes, that means you can completely bypass your device. This can be a life-saver for those of us who have tons of content on our device and need to squeeze one more thing in.

What’s App

One of Miguel’s favorite apps for messaging, recording video, or taking pictures is WhatsApp. Like Messages, you can bypass saving images/video you record in WhatsApp to your Camera Roll. WhatsApp Settings (Settings->Chats) make it possible to toggle Save to Camera Roll on or off. If you leave this set to off, if you ever have to recover your space, you can simply “CLEAR ALL CHATS” or “DELETE ALL CHATS.” Either option will remove any images/videos you may have shared or received. Of course, if you don’t want to lose precious photos others have sent you via WhatsApp, be sure to take advantage of the next tip. You can always access WhatsApp via your computer and save pictures/video directly to your desktop or laptop.

Google Photos

The Google Photos app makes it easy to backup, or archive, all existing photos and videos saved on your device to the cloud. Then, once backed up to the Google Photos cloud storage, you can select the option to “Free up space” (as shown in image at right). Taking this action to move all your camera roll content that has been saved to Google Photos will shift your photos to Deleted Items. You have the option of deleting all photos at that point and recovering space on your iOS device. Another benefit of Google Photos is that you can create albums and slideshows and edit photos via the Google Photos website.

Take time today to clean up old photos on your iDevices and clear out space for even more amazing apps!

Featured Image by hurk from Pixabay

November 2, 2017 0 comments

iOS Tips and Tricks Microsoft

Using OneDrive to Back Up Your iOS Camera

by Miguel Guhlin January 31, 2017

written by Miguel Guhlin

“I’ve taken so many pictures and videos, but I can’t get them off my iOS device!” Many fall into this trap. Caught up in the excitement of capturing and creating content, they fill the limited storage of their iPhone or iPad. Data is lost as teachers reset the device to clear content. Let’s take a look at an option you may not have considered, Microsoft OneDrive.

To the Rescue

Teachers attending a TCEA Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) event asked,”How do we use Office 365 accounts to backup photos and videos?” Another question that follows is “How do we share photos taken at school events with a wider audience?” The answer is Microsoft OneDrive, available for personal (5 gigs of storage) and work (1 terabyte up to 15 terabytes for school accounts).

The hub of Microsoft’s mobile apps, OneDrive makes interacting with various Microsoft apps possible. The iOS version offers an elegant interface (sans complex options) that you can use in the following ways:

Access and open OneNote Notebooks
Automatically upload camera photos, which feature camera information like camera used, shutter speed, aperture.
Create photo albums to facilitate sharing
Scan and digitize paper documents, whiteboards, and business cards

OneDrive now features Scan, a way to digitize paper documents and save them direct to OneDrive!

Miscellaneous features such as monitoring your storage space, the ability to modify settings, accessing offline files, and setting up multiple Microsoft Office 365 accounts are also included.

Once activated, OneDrive will upload pictures and videos from your device to your account. On your mobile, as well as online, you also can organize items into albums for sharing, allowing viewing and/or editing. The Album image thumbnail rotates to give you a preview of the contents.

Save Photo or Record Video to the Cloud

OneDrive makes it easy to take a photo or create a video that can be saved directly to cloud storage. This eliminates the hassle of creating a video, then figuring out how to back it up. Instead, your photo or video is saved directly to your OneDrive account. See how you can do this with this guide.

onedrive

As you can see in the screenshot above, the video recorded straight to OneDrive (bypassing the iOS Camera Roll) and appears with a time/date stamp. Sharing options for this Microsoft product (view/edit with a link or not) for Business/Education reflect your school district administrator’s preferences. OneDrive personal accounts provide individuals with more flexibility.

Interact with Photos Online

If you back up your camera roll to a personal OneDrive account, the photos will be available to you at OneDrive.live.com. You will see the “Camera Roll” folder appear inside your Pictures folder. To see Albums of Photos, and to access a specific Photos menu, be sure to click on the left sidebar, as shown below.

Share Albums and Photos

You can access photo albums and, as shown below, modify the sharing options:

onedrive

One neat feature that OneDrive-based photos have is the auto-tagging option. OneDrive automatically tags photos, as seen below, with one-word tags:

onedrive

Conclusion

Offering a multi-function feature set, OneDrive provides you with backup and creation options. You can backup photos or videos you have saved to the Camera Roll and use OneDrive to capture photos/videos direct to the cloud. Finally, you can use the iOS Send To menu to save to OneDrive. Give it a try and avoid the hassle of other, less effective methods.

January 31, 2017 0 comments

iOS Tips and Tricks

Quote Makers, Engage!

by Miguel Guhlin January 23, 2017

written by Miguel Guhlin

Leaders, looking for an easy app to use to spice up important quotes that you include in your staff missives, parent newsletters, or student projects? How about a simple way to highlight key ideas in assigned student text? Typorama may fit the bill for iOS device users!

Quote Makers, Create!

I love collecting quotes, often snapping a photo of my favorite quotes at Buc-ee’s while I’m traveling or jotting them down in my handy notepad. The best part of being out on the road is encountering truisms, as well as listening to K-12 and adult learners share their stories.

Just last month, I spent some time in Edinburg facilitating Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) professional learning. We kicked off the session reflecting on a powerful quote from Microsoft. Using Typorama, I recreated the quote below.

quote

Don’t you think this is more engaging than words on a slide? Typorama is a VERY COOL iOS quote app! Once you start using it, you won’t be able to stop.

Scan this image with Aurasma to listen to the audio introduction from Dr. Katie Alaniz, author of “Digital Tools for Today’s Classrooms,” the book from which this quote was taken.

Quote Makers, Adhere to Copyright!

Typorama combines a wide range of copyright-friendly backgrounds and text styles and allows watermarks to be inserted as well to advertise your campus, district, organization, or event. What’s more, you can use pictures from your camera roll and then add powerful quotes from students, staff, or even your own creations.

Note: Don’t have an iOS device? You can make your own image quotes with Google Draw or Powerpoint, but you might also give one of these a try: Recite.com, Quozio.com, BeHappyMe, and/or VizzBuzz

Not satisfied with the pictures that come with Typorama? Save pictures from any of the popular free image sites, several shown at the bottom of this blog entry, to your iOS device and then add your quote. The New York Public Library just released their digital collection for use, so be sure to include that in your list of image sources.

Learning Connections

As written in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), “Students must develop the ability to comprehend and process material from a wide range of texts.” Using a quote generator like Typorama, you can help students identify topic sentences or key ideas represented in text.

Tap into the excitement students experience when creating quote a work of art. This work can be displayed via social media or made into a “mini-poster” for bulletin board placement. And you can also help students “summarize the main idea and supporting details in text in ways that maintain meaning.” Whether for professional development (e.g. book study, article jigsaw) with adults or ask ing students to work in small teams with a buddy to analyze text, this type of activity is powerful for engaged learning.

Quote Makers, Share!

Learners can, as encouraged in Digital Media in Today’s Classrooms, “Collaborate to create an online clearinghouse of student-created media.” This clearinghouse can serve as a resource for students to use as they support one another in preparing for exams. The clearinghouse can be any one of the following:

OneDrive-based Image Clearinghouse

Hallway bulletin board
Google Photos – Easy to create a shared album, enable multiple staff/students to add content.
OneDrive Photos – Easy to add images to a folder, as well as share edit rights or view only link.
OneNote Online Notebook
School or classroom Instagram account

Steps to Make and Take

quote Here are the steps you can take to create your Typorama quote project. Remember, these techniques can be used whether you have the app or not. If you and your students are on a computer, try one of the aforementioned, browser-based, free quote generators.

Read a selection of text, online or from paper.
Choose your favorite quote or come up with your own based on what you have read (better activity).
Start up Typorama, select a background from their image search results or use a picture you have taken with your camera. Remember, you can always find a picture online. The image should reflect a key word in the quote text.
Modify the text and image features and then share it online.

Enhance with Augmented Reality

Using the iOS app Aurasma, you can convert these student-created image quotable quotes into “hyperlinked” images. That is, you turn each image into a “trigger” that when students point their iOS device to it, it has students reading the quote aloud, sharing a short anecdote.

Reminder: TCEA members, don’t forget about the upcoming January 25, 2017 Augment Your Reality Lunch-and-Learn webinar where we will share more ideas for using AR in the classroom.

Use the Aurasma app on your Android/iOS device and scan the quote picture above to listen to audio via Voxer!

More Than Quotes

This is a perfect app for both adult and K-12 learners to use. You can use it for creating memorable vocabulary words, summarizing fictional texts, and posing problems in social studies or history class. Please comment below and share how you would use Typorama in your classroom.

List of Copyright-Friendly Image Resources

January 23, 2017 0 comments

Digital Literacy Online Tools and Apps

Powerful Photo Editing for All Devices

by Lori Gracey December 21, 2016

written by Lori Gracey

Photo editing is one of the skills that I never really learned. As I was growing up, our Kodak or Polaroid cameras didn’t allow us to make any changes to the photo, and only a full photography shop with a darkroom could change the image once it left the camera. But that’s definitely not true today. Our students should learn how to (and when to) edit photos as part of any good media literacy program. And I’ve found the perfect free resource to help them be successful doing that.

Polarr Photo Editor works on Android, iOS, Mac, Windows, Chrome web browser, any web browser, and Linux, which means it works on every device imaginable. And did I mention that it’s free? The features Polarr offers include those for basic users, as well as more advanced options. You can add a filter easily or apply automatic fixes with just one click. It also includes step-by-step, interactive tutorials to help you and your students learn photo editing basics. And there are free stock photos on the site that your students can use to practice.

For advanced users, there is a full version of Polaar which is just $19.99. (That’s about $100 less than the price of Lightroom software.) However, educators with an EDU email can receive the software for free by applying here. With the full version, you can adjust the color, lighting, detail, vignetting, HSL (hue, saturation, and luminance), RGB channel curves, toning, and distortion. You can even apply photo effects like fringing or film grain. And you can do this on a RAW file up to 40MP in size. All of the adjustments are done in real time and there’s a history panel that will quickly let you undo any change you don’t like.

Photo Editing Resources

To help students master important photo editing skills, here are a few good resources:

Teaching Kids Photo Editing
Downloadable Photos for Editing Practice (along with lessons for K-5)
Teaching Photo Editing in the Classroom with Katherine Conor (process)
Visual Literacy (book excerpt)

December 21, 2016 0 comments

Google Tips and Tricks iOS Tips and Tricks

Digitizing Your Memories with PhotoScan

by Lori Gracey December 7, 2016

written by Lori Gracey

If you’ve got some spare time over the Christmas holidays, you might consider digitizing all of those photos you have lying around. A new, free app from Google, PhotoScan, makes this easy.

Available for both Android and iOS, the app scans photos using your smartphone’s camera in a way that eliminates glare and shadows to improve overall quality. It will also automatically crop out edges, like the white border of a Polaroid shot. Google says it should work with photos in frames and picture albums, too. That can certainly save you some time.

When scanning a photo, the app asks you to line up a circle in the center of the screen with four dots located near the corners of the photo. The app then takes multiple individual images and stitches them together. That reduces the glare you might get when taking a single photo from one particular angle. Photos are automatically cropped, rotated, and color corrected. You can save them to Google Photos with one tap — and then, when you want to find them, you can just search for “scans” inside Google Photos and they’ll all come up. (You can also save them to your camera roll or share them to other apps.)

The app is so easy to use that you could even have your children or your students busy digitizing the past. So grab those old photos and get busy scanning them. You’ll be glad you did!

December 7, 2016 0 comments

Good Teaching Online Tools and Apps

Become a Storymaker: Creating Engaging Digital Tales

by Miguel Guhlin June 28, 2016

written by Miguel Guhlin

When I first participated in Joe Lambert’s digital storytelling workshop, my father had just passed away. Creating a digital story, Garbed in Silver, a combination of narrative and images, helped me cope with the grief of his death. It also helped me reconnect with some of my best memories, allowing me to create a remembrance for my young son that endures today on YouTube and Teachercast video hosting sites. Digital storytelling can be a powerful way to connect with others. In this blog entry, we explore digital storytelling resources and tips.

Join the ongoing TCEA Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) SkypeChat via your mobile device or online. Explore and share concepts at the intersection of teaching, learning, leading, and technology!

1) Finding Digital Storytelling Resources

Looking for digital storytelling resources? There are quite a few available online. Here are my top three favorites:

StoryCenter.org and StoryCenter’s Digital Storytelling Cookbook
We Are StoryMakers
University of Houston’s Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling

Each of these contains digital stories that connect at a visceral level. And some, like We Are StoryMakers, invites the work of writers, actors, and media enthusiasts to create with a simple directive: you have five minutes to create a narrative and then record it.

2) Storytelling Keys

“In oral culture,” shares Joe Lambert, “we humans learned to retain stories as epigrams, or little tales that had a meaningful proverb at the end. In our current culture, many of us have not developed an epigrammatic learning equivalent to these processes.” Yet it’s not just about creating stories that are entertaining; it is about creating stories that transform us. As Vyasa says, “If you listen carefully, at the end, you’ll be someone else.” To accomplish that, I like to think that stories engage both our experience and beliefs, as Gretchen Bernabei demonstrates in this image, and helps us reflect and transform our perception of what has happened in our lives.

digital storytelling There are various approaches to storytelling. The oral storytelling approach focuses on a beginning event, a middle with multiple events, each summarized by an image that captures our attention, until it reaches a turning point, moves to falling action, and ends. This story structure can be used for a lot more than just oral storytelling, of course. To prepare for this type of approach, Joe Lambert suggests creating a “memory box.”

Of course, it is easier to collect images, videos, and sound in one virtual space (e.g. Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox) than ever before. A few tools I recommend for creating a digital memory box include the following:

OneNote + Office Lens: These two free apps, which work on a multitude of mobile devices, allow you to store text, audio, images, and embed videos, and could easily be used to collect information. The Office Lens app lets you digitize content, snap a picture of paper items or photos, and save them to OneNote, a digital notebook. With OneNote’s built-in digital ink, students can easily fill in the chart and storyboard their digital story. The teacher can take those student creations, combine them with the final products, and publish them on Docs.com as a OneNote Notebook (which is free for everyone and works great on iPads, Chromebooks, Windows/Mac computers, and Android).
Google Photos + Google Drive: With these two apps, you can save photos or videos taken with your device to Google Photos, saving content online. Google Drive offers unlimited hosting for GoogleApps for Education (GAFE) users, so you can easily drop videos and images there.
Collecting images can be straightforward with mobile apps like Camera Awesome (iOS and Android), Camera MX (Android), and Google Camera. Image annotation becomes easy with Annotate (iOS), Photo Editor by Aviary (Android and iOS), SnapSeed (iOS and Android), as well as EyeEm Camera and Photo Filter (iOS and Android). Don’t be afraid to take advantage of green screen apps (DoInk for iOS and Green Screen Pro for Android) to further enhance photos, making your own greenscreen with a $1.00 Dollar Tree store green plastic tablecover.

3) Find Photos That Make You Care

“Is that your son?” asked a friend when I showed him the digital story I had made of my Dad. The picture showed my son, perched like a king, in my Dad’s lap. Both were grinning, the picture such an attention grabber that even now I find it hard to look away. If you are looking for examples of photos that hold your gaze, check out the IPPAwards.com site. You can also find a wealth of images in free, public domain, or available for re-use online.

Note: Want to learn more about becoming a story maker? Be sure to join Miguel Guhlin at TCEA’s Tots and Technology Conference taking place this summer in both Galveston and Frisco, Tx!

4) Combine Images and Audio into a Digital Story

“Little strokes” said Benmin Franklin “fell great oaks.” Epigrams like this one powerfully send the message that you have achieved something, overcome adversity if it comes at the end of your digital story. If you can’t make one up, find the right epigram to borrow, properly cited, of course. Practice telling your story aloud, using the pictures as your guideposts; keep your wisdom brief.

Apps like Shadow Puppet EDU, Adobe Voice, and Storymaker 2, as well as MS Office Mix (Windows/Mac) enable you to combine content in powerful ways. The process is straightforward, but the key lies in creating epigrams that will stick in people’s minds. Include music only if it enhances your story; otherwise let your voice, or silence, and images make the message clear.

Conclusion

All of us are carrying countless stories in our mobile devices, in the moments that we felt compelled to capture with a camera. And those moments call to our spirit, seeking to liberate words that lay afraid in our minds. Digital stories can set you free.

June 28, 2016 0 comments

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