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Sunday, May 13, 2012

Google Images and Internet Tools In General

In one of our water cooler conversations at sCoolWork I was giving high praises to Google Images. Yes, the place where you type a keyword and get lots of graphics.
It might seem strange to younger readers, but up until a few years back, when it came to planting pictures and graphics into a document, Image Banks ruled. These were special repositories of tons of graphics, images, even audio clips and animation. Most of us used (an maybe still using?) MSOffice's Gallery (whether in-program or on-line), but many of us actually bought CDs over CDs filled with graphics! Imagine working with a very finite image collection, wherein if you wanted a "tree", you'd get to choose from 5-10 different graphics, spanned over 7 CDs or so (if you want tree #4, please insert CD #6 etc.).
Those of us who are truly ancient, even remember the world renowned PrintMaster from Broderbund. Back in the 80's, armed with a dot-matrix printer, if you wanted to create the coolest banners, posters and signs - PrintMaster was the way to go. You'd get to choose a font (from about 8 sets), some graphics and a template, and the result would look like this:


It's nice to reminisce, but can we even compare the 5-10 trees we had @ PrintMaster and the CD collections to this?? At the time this was written, "tree" produced some 2.6 BILLION results. Not bad compared to 10.
I'm not gonna repeat how the cloud had made us better etc., but I would like to make a very relevant point. When it comes to educational aids, there is so much free stuff out there, it is flabbergasting. Time consuming tasks such as planting an image, searching for material, formatting bibliography, finding a creative angle - it's all there. It might not be marketed or labeled as a homework aid, but it sure is good for our uses.
Over the next few months, we intend to incorporate such free tools in sCoolWork. All in the effort to save students' time and improve grades. Stay tuned to what's coming and I think you'd  be pleasantly surprised... :)

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