URL: PicMonkey.com
Primary Category: Creativity Tool
PicMonkey is a “freemium” online photo editing service (meaning: there are ads and free services as well as a ‘premium’ features for a fee) that began in mid 2012. This tool is completely web based and there are no additional programs to download or install. PicMonkey has many great photo editing features that include basic editing, text, touch ups, effects, overlays, frames, textures, and themes. If you want ad-free editing as well as many additional fonts, effects, overlays, and textures you can pay $33/year or $4.99/month. It is very friendly and can make your projects look professional and very unique. It can be used as a very basic editing tool (adding a frame or some text to a picture) or as elaborate as you’d like. One of its greatest feature is their free ideas, tutorials, “How to”s, and inspirations. After you finish editing your pictures, you can upload to several social networks.
Before using this tool, you must know how to upload pictures to your computer in order to choose them for editing on PicMonkey. And all you need to use this tool is Adobe flash player and pictures.
How to use this creativity tool:
1. Go to picmonkey.com
2. Choose whether you will edit, touch up, design, or make a collage.
3. If you will edit or design, choose a picture.
4. Once you choose your picture, start editing and creating!
5. Choose the tools you will use to make your project as basic or elaborate as you want.
6. You can save on your computer or sharing on several social networks.
7. If you want to change your project, continue editing it until you are satisfied.
I would use this map to show students where the 2014 World Cup is taking place. This can be used as a model for what you want your students to create or part of your lesson to show on a power point or any other media.
This tool can be used by teachers and students in order to make any photo project. Students and teachers can use the many design tools to create interesting and educational pictures, which can be used in presentations, part of blogs, give instructions, create interest, create games, etc. Since you can add overlays, you can use several pictures together. Although your project cannot be edited once it is saved, you can keep saving pictures and adding layers to them in order to use these edited pictures as part of a series – for example: water cycle, writing process, animal kingdom, and food chain. Since it is entirely web-based, students can use this anywhere. I will use this for all grade levels (I am an ESL support teacher for students in K-5) and have students use a preloaded picture that I will save on our common drive to introduce themselves at the beginning of the school year.
Advantages: Free! Clean, friendly, multiple easy-to-use editing tools.
Disadvantages: Can be slow, must have Adobe flash, cannot come back to work on any project – must finish in one sitting (or not close the website or lose internet connection).
I would freely recommend this to everybody - in education or not. This is a fun, easy to use free tool that will make any project better. Students and teachers can use this easily for any subject.
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