PicMonkey!

Started using a cool FREE app called PicMonkey to make visuals with words, photos, & clipart. Used it to make on-line and print flyers for library events, book promotions, and school events.  Also encouraging teachers and students to use it for assignments.  It's a very creative and user-friendly web tool that could be used for such things as:

- Start-of-Year Get-to-know-you Posters of students

- Teaching Persuasion through Advertising

- Book Reviews

- Biographies

- Compare & Contrast

- Science: Cells, Simple Machines, Plants & Animals, Weather & Space

- Elements of Literature

- Historical Events

Kids can use a photo from a website, then add their own text and graphics to it. They can also use their own photos from home too, and do things such as adding speech bubbles to their own photos for text.

If used for an assignment, we all know the kids can end up combining their skills of content knowledge, visual literacy, and technology, and the kids have a lot of fun doing it.

Here's the site:
http://www.picmonkey.com/