One of the issues constantly asked at meetings when teachers sit around and discuss ICT is "When will schools stop buying software?"
The evolution of the web has meant that many software packages used in school also have some kind of alternative which can be used online... for free. Schools have to make the decision whether they continue to buy expensive software or whether they use online versions. It's possible that in the future Microsoft Word and the Office suite in general become so expensive that schools stop buying them and go online instead.
We are currently considering upgrading our graphics software in upper Key Stage Two, so it was with great interest that I investigated Picnik, an online photo editing facility that has a stunning range of tools for manipuilating photos and other images. Whilst it may not have the range of a piece of software such as Photoshop Elements, it does the simple things for free. An added bonus is that it works seamlessly wth Flickr and Picasa.
Some of our students in P4 have started to use Picnik to do simple editing, such as red-eye removal. Future developments for Picnik look really exciting and it's definitely worth a visit.
You can go for a Picnik by clicking here!
2 comments:
Hi There!,
Its pretty cool that your utilizing web tools to get children to do creative stuff.
Check out www.flauntr.com - its got hundreds of effects (textures,light effects, overlays, digital scrapbooking compositions, etc) that you can apply with a single click. And effects can be saved on top of each other.
It would be a tool kids would love to use.
Thanks for this.
Flauntr looks really promising and I'll be investigating it further as well as recommending it to our students.
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