Mobile Technology in TAFE

I believe it may be called “Snow Envy”? But I have never felt a strong feeling or need for a White Christmas until my twitter network twittered about snow days, snow is falling or my first snowman for the year. You see many West Australians never get to see snow unless we travel a very, very loooooong way to NSW Snowy Mountains, Victorian High Country, Tasmania or another country.

I can but dream of a White Christmas but at least I can cheer myself up by adding some Christmas bling to my blog.

So I tried starting with the Snowflake Generator recommended by Jennifer Wagner but I discovered one serious problem! Neither myself or my kids had ever learnt at school how to make paper snowflakes so we had no idea of the design concept (What the?).

Notice that Master 9 is considerably better at snowflakes than me!

Okay snowflakes not working for me…. so must be time for the image generators (with image generators they supply the image and you add your desired text). The trouble is there are so many image generators that you can use to create images it can be a lengthy process to find the right ones to use.

Fortunately Rollyo came to the rescue because it is a search engine that you can use to searches image generators. So all I needed to do was insert my search terms e.g. Christmas, Snowman, Santa.

But before I started creating my Christmas bling I had to make my own book cover for image generators thanks to Sign Generators making the task easier for me to find the right image faster.

Time to get to work. Grabbed myself a Christmas Garden Flowers sign.

and a winter snowman garden sign…

and off course I can’t forget my Christmas list….

Still felt that I was missing out so fortunately I found Build your Own Snowman and that is exactly what I did! And at least I did not fail that like I did snowflakes.

FINAL THOUGHT

Feeling happier now that I have added some Christmas bling. There is lots more to choose from if you want to create some of your own — give Rollyo a try for locating suitable image generators faster. You can read more about image generators in this post.

Seriously worried for my twitter network, in snow areas; they may need to be concerned — if they are not careful they could end up with crazy Aussies visiting them for Christmas. PS perhaps you may want to give me instructions for creating snowflakes as my education is seriously lacking!

Yep, was doing some serious investigations of Murdoch Universities 23 Things Program designed for librarians to learn about web 2.o technologies and my attention was grabbed by Thing 14: Image Generator. Why? Well playing around with the different image generators looks like fun but also is another quick way of creating images for blogs and presentations.

I must have been living in a vacuum because I never realised there was sooooooo many online tools for image generation. Actually I was totally overwhelmed with the quantity of image generators available which makes me wonder how the participants of the 23 Things program felt. Enjoyment at road testing a few or overwhelmed by too many options?

Here are a few of the images I created:

This is what I thought of image generators (Chalkboard Message Generator)

But we all know that I should have been working (www.txt2pic.com/comic-strip)

However what I really wanted was chocolate! (Chocolate Generator)

And my mind is too busy thinking about holidays to focus on work on a Sunday night! (Make A Birthday Cake)

And the good news is Kathryn, in the Thing 14: Image Generator post, was also nice enough to provide a link to Generator Blog which posts about these type of online tools. So I will get a regular update on image generators that could save me time creating images - and provide me with a bit of fun time!

FINAL THOUGHT

The 23 Things program has been adopted by over 100 libraries worldwide and was adapted from the Learning 2.0 program developed by Helen Blowers as an online self-discovery program that encourages the exploration of web 2.0 tools and new technologies.

You can read more about Murdoch University’s 23 Program here. I like the way Murdoch University has included weekly workshops for “walk throughs” of weekly tasks and set up a mentoring network to support participants.

I know Michele Martin has considered adapting the 23 Things program for Non-Profit organisations and after feedback from readers she commented:

“Nonprofit staff hear us talking about online tools, and what they hear is “more work.” Their reaction so often is, “This is complicated, I don’t have time to learn it or use it, and really it doesn’t help me help my clients/ customers/ program participants.”

We need to help them understand *why* this stuff is useful, and *how* it can support their day-to-day work - maybe even help them get their jobs done more effectively and efficiently.

I believe people have/are trying it with educators. So I am pondering how this program would go with educators? I know most educators I work with would have similar thoughts highlighted by Michele Martin.

Sarah Stewart (Sarah’s Musings) commented on my These Are My Favourite Tools! What Are Yours? post that as a result of my posts on presentation skills she has discovered FlickR and have started using the images on blog and in presentations but she is finding it time consuming finding images. What she would like is advice on quick and easy ways of finding images that you are allowed to use.

So here are some of my suggestions:

Search for images using FlickrCC

FlickrCC is the best online tool I have found for quickly searching creative common Flickr photos. It is considerably faster than using FlickrStorm, Creative Commons Image Search or the creative commons advanced search at Flickr. Unlike the other search options FlickrCC also provides facilities to edit the image using their online editing tool - click on this link to view their image editing options.

Thanks to Judy O’Connell (Hey Jude) for telling me about FlickrCC! Check out Judy’s post on Find Free Images Online - My List for options other than using Flickr creative commons photos. I personally prefer using Flickr creative commons photos because there are more photos at Flickr so I am more likely to find photos faster.

Remember that when you use Creative Commons images you are allowed to use these provided you follow the terms specified by their Creative Commons license. In simple terms you are allowed to use these images provided you credit the original source by linking back to that source - you need to refer to Flickr Creative Commons information for a more detailed explanation as there are a range of different licenses with different restrictions.

Creating your own images

There are several ways you can create your own images:

1. Start building up your own collection of photos
I now tend to carry my camera wherever I go and like to share my photos online at Flickr.

2. Use an editing tool to create your own images
I use SnagIT to take screen shots of web pages, software applications or add check information to photos (my screen shot of FlickrCC above was created using SnagIT)

3. Use an image creating tool to create images
I love using fd’s Flickr Toys to remix photos into lots of different images like Mosaics etc.

However today I decided to check out Alan Levine (CogDog) Web 2.0 Gem Starter List because I knew Alan was bound to have some cool tools for editing photos (he loves photos). As a result I came across Dumpr which is a lot better than fd’s Flickr Toys. Here is a same of the different photos I created using Dumpr (can use photos from your computer, Flickr, a Web 2.0 mashup or URL)

The other tool that Alan suggested that I liked was spell with Flickr.

FINAL THOUGHT

Hopefully you find these tools save you time. Please let me know if you have any similar photo editing, image creation or photo searching tools that I should check out.