Show Me The Money

I’ve posted about finding royalty- and copyright-free images on line before.  In this post, I’d like to share an often overlooked source: the U.S. Government.  Many government departments have images in the public domain, which usually means that teachers can use them in presentations, classroom activities, and almost any not-for-profit ways you can imagine.  Of course, there are exceptions, so be sure to read the fine print.

The U.S. Mint

The Mint publishes some very nice images of the money it produces including coins commemorating states, presidents, first ladies, national parks, and significant historical events.  Most are available for free download, though a few are copyrighted (such as the Sacagawea dollar coin).  There are also a few anti-counterfeiting restrictions on reproducing paper money, so be sure to read the fine print on the website.

NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has some amazing copyright-free images and videos available.  Whether you are looking for images of astronauts, rockets or other spacecraft, or images of outerspace, the NASA website has you covered.  Some of the images include those from the Hubble Telescope which has captured extraterrestrial images for over a decade.  There are lots of science- and engineering-related images, and the website makes it easy to search for them.

CDC

You might not ordinarily think to look on the website for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, but but the Public Health Image Library has lots of interesting stock images available, related to topics such as home safety, personal hygiene, agriculture, child safety and more.  Of course, you’ll also find lots of images of bacteria, microscopic pests, and other diseases, some of which may not be suitable for children.

More

For links to photos from more U.S. Government photos and images, visit the USA.gov website.  You will find links to images from lots of other departments related to agriculture, the environment, defense, safety, science and technology and others.  In essence, these images are “free” because you’ve paid for them with your taxes.  So, don’t hesitate to take a look and use them if you need to.

Optical Illusions

We’ve all seen optical illusions before.  Many of them, like the Ames Room above, take advantage of the flattening effect of the still camera, which only captures images from a single perspective.  But part of the fun is moving around to a different vantage point, which reveals how the eye is tricked.

Brusspup is an artist who has a YouTube channel that reveals optical illusions that he creates.  These videos offer the best of both worlds because the viewer can see both the illusion and how the trick is achieved.  Some examples are below.

How can these be used in the classroom?  Optical illusions are almost universally engaging.  Beginning with a still image of the illusion (or by pausing the video at that point,) students could be challenged to express how the illusion is created.  The class could then watch the video to see the solution.  This could be a fun and challenging way for students to formulate hypotheses and think critically.

Alternatively, students could be directed to the YouTube channel and asked to find their favorite illusion.  They could then be assigned the task of describing the illusion (both the effect and how it was achieved) in a presentation or in writing.  Depending on the level of the students, breaking down the task into step by step pieces would also be a good test of their English.

There are lots of other ways to use these videos.  Whether they are incorporated into a classroom activity or just viewed as an informal warm-up activity, they are sure to get your students talking.

More Free Photos

MorgueFile.com is a morbid name for a useful resource.  Despite what you might expect, this website does not contain pictures from a morgue.  A morgue file is a term from the newspaper industry to describe paper files that are inactive and only kept for reference.  Illustrators later adopted this term to refer to files of images that could serve as inspiration or reference.  MorgueFile.com is a large collection of images that are contributed to be used for reference by artists and teachers.

Once you get past the name, this is a very useful resource.  I was struck by a link on the homepage to a collection of photos of robot toys, including the one above.  There are a total of 116 toy robots in this collection, which is really interesting to skim through.

Of course, toy robots may not apply to all of your teaching needs.  Other searches revealed 66 photos labeled classroom, 234 photos labeled student, 734 photos labeled books, and 1190 photos labeled computers.   Many of the photos are high resolution and have a very professional stock-photography appearance, by which I mean objects are on white backgrounds and scenes are generic enough to be useful in many situations.  Next time you need an image for your PowerPoint presentation, consider an interesting and relevant photograph instead of canned clip art.

Top 5 Technologies I Should Be Using

Last week, I listed the top 5 technologies that you should be using if you are an ESL teacher in 2010.  Today, I present the list of the next 5 technologies I need to explore and possibly add to my bag of tricks.  If you have experience with them, leave your opinions, suggestions, and tips in the comments.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the (near) future:

1. Google Wave – Occasionally billed as the Future Of Email, Wave combines email, IM, and the collaborative parts of Google Docs.  Watch the full Google demo video or the lower resolution abridged version to get the idea.  This is one of those really cool technologies that leaves you asking, “So what do I do with it?”  I hope to have answers to that question soon.

2. Zorap – Like Wave, Zorap combines several disparate elements into one collaborative space.  From what I’ve seen, a space can be set up for many users quickly and easily.  That space can then be used for audio, video, and text conversations and files and documents can be shared to the group.  See the demo for more.  For a free application, it integrates a surprising number of interesting options for remote learning.

3. Ning – A social network akin to Facebook, but it’s not Facebook.  There are many existing nings for topic areas such as The English Companion Ning (“Where English teachers go to help each other”) and Classroom 2.0 (“the social network for those interested in Web 2.0 and Social Media in education”).  Plus, you can create a Ning for a topic that you like or a specific group of people, like the students in your class.  Because it’s a closed system, Ning may be more useful to anyone who can’t (or doesn’t want to) use Facebook or other social networks with their students.

4. Screenr – A free, web-based screen recorder.  Just drag a frame over the part of your screen you want to capture and Screenr will record a video of what happens inside that frame until you tell it to stop.  Great for creating demonstration videos or capturing a presentation.

5. Prezi – When I first saw Prezi, I thought it was just another slide sharing application.  Since then, I’ve seen some slick, remotely controlled presentations that use Prezi to great effect.  One of the best features is the ability to smoothly zoom in and out on portions of the presentation.  One large document can contain everything from headings to footnotes with each part zooming and snapping into place on the screen as it is selected.  This works equally well if the presenter is guiding the presentation or if an individual wants to explore it on his own.  For example, take a look at this Grammar Review Prezi.  You can use the arrows to go forward and back within the presentation, but you can also take control by zooming in and out, dragging the page around, and clicking on the text to zoom to a specific point.  Once you get used to this style of navigation (or, rather, every style of navigation simultaneously) many interesting ways to structure and organize information become possible.

Bonus: Sikuli – I’ve used applications with macros before, but Sikuli’s approach is unique because it can create a macro for any application using your computers GUI.  Think that sounds geeky?  Then the demonstration video might also be a little intimidating.  The gist of it is, you can automate almost any multi-step task on your computer, just by writing a simple script for Sikuli to follow.  While I can’t think of any tasks that are repetitive enough that I’d actually save time by learning how to use Sikuli (and, frankly, I’d rather play Bejeweled myself, thank you very much), the potential of this application is intriguing.

Writing 1000 Words

So, tell me about your bus ride to school...

Getting your students to write (or speak) can sometimes be a challenge.  They say a picture’s worth a thousand words, which got me to thinking: Where can teachers find interesting pictures that might prompt students to write or talk.  Here are some examples:

Photoshop Contest.com

Photoshop Contest.com is a website that posts a picture each week for visitors to edit into other pictures.  The results can be fascinating.  The historical decoder device at right used this picture of typesetter’s letters as a starting point.  In addition to generating interesting pictures, trying to tease out which components of the picture are from the original can be an interesting challenge for students.

Worth100.com

Worth1000.com is similar to Photoshop Contest with a variety of contests for beginning through advanced photo manipulators.  Although the results range in quality and interest, some of the theme categories could generate some interesting writing or discussion.  For example, the subjects in Sports Literalisms and Bald Celebrities may not be universally recognized by students, but Unsung Vending Machines and Less Than Usual require no explanation.  Some of the Literalisms provide interesting visual examples of idioms and other common English expressions.

Compfight.com

Flickr is a very popular photosharing website.  And, although the sheer number of photos posted means it takes a little more digging to find them, similarly provocative photos can be found.  I often use Compfight.com to search Flickr because it’s very easy to select search parameters like Creative Commons licensed content and Safe Search.   Try searching for terms like manipulate, photoshop, and trick to find pictures that have been digitally edited.  Some, like the example of the car parked on the street have had no digital manipulation, but there is another trick involved.  Can you spot it?  Can your students?