Free, Royalty-Free Images

It seems like no matter what topic I'm presenting, teachers are always interested in free images for web sites.  You can search them yourself through a search engine like Google.  Just type "free royalty-free images".d The first "free" indicates that you don't want to pay anything for the images.  The second, "royalty-free", indicates that you don't want to pay a fee for the image each time you use it.  So, by combining the two, you're not paying for the image upfront, nor are you paying a fee each time you use it. No matter what your search generates, you'll want to read each site's Terms of Use.  This is the section that will spell out exactly what you can and can't do with the images.  Here's are a few that rank among my favorites:

The Icon Search Engine contains over 300,000 free icons that you can use and enjoy.  Each icon comes in different sizes as well as different formats.

 

Veezzle is another great source and lets you keyword your way through free stock photos.  Veezzle crawls through other known providers of free stock photos and aggregates all of them into one place.

Discovery Education  provides a great clip art gallery for elementary school teachers.  Their clip art is can be searched by category and easily downloaded.

Infographics: A 21st Century Tool for STEM

I have to admit, I've been rather intrigued by infographics lately.  They are so sleek and shiny and share pertinent data and statistics in an aesthetic fashion.  Not to mention, they seem to be everywhere.  They seem so simple, but try putting one together.  They are complex little animals that force you to think about your audience, your relevant information... and your communication skills.  As a result, they are the perfect tool for use in a STEM education classroom.

By requiring students to create an infographic, students are required to use those higher level thinking skills of Bloom's Taxonomy.  Students must consider which data to use and summarize it in a succinct way that will communicate effectively (Evaluation).  They must plan and organize the content (Synthesis) and prioritize and categorize it, allowing the user to make visual connections to the content (Analysis).

Infographics are a creative way to teach 21st century skills through STEM education by seamlessly integrating them into your curriculum.  There are many infographics creators to pick from, but my favorite right now is Picktochart.  It's easy to use, allows for student creativity, provides a decent selection of themes, images and icons and best of all it's free.  Students can also export their infographics to a standard format (PNG or JPG) for use in another program or medium. And, for creative minds or first timers, there are video tutorials that walk through the entire process as well as a comprehensive resource section.




Starfish Education is not affiliated with Picktochart (other than being happy users of their service) and is not compensated in any way for posting about their company or online tools.

Prezi- The Best Tool for Online Presentations

Has anyone ever used Prezi?  This online presentation software makes it really easy to make and share a dynamic presentation.  The best part of it for schools is that it's on the internet.  So, no software to install and no school server space being used.  Students can create non-linear presentations that can include links, images, and even videos.  What a great way for students to use the top three tiers of Bloom's Taxonomy!

Google Docs for Collaboration

Google Docs is a great tool for collaborating in the classroom or across the nation.  With Google Docs, students can create documents, spreadsheets, presentations and even graphics and share them with others.

Google Docs now supports a clip art library of sorts by allowing you to search Google Images to insert into your project.  Most educators shy away from Google Images because of the inappropriate images that could come up in a search, but using Google Images through Google Docs will yield different results as they have put a filter in place to make it more education friendly.

ThingLink

ThingLink is a wonderful site/app (iOS) for turning an ordinary image "interactive".  The way this works is by adding/tagging a image, w/ audio, video, or links that get embedded into an image and then activated when the cursor moves over or clicks on it.  Also, the educational portal allows for students to use ThingLink in lots of educational ways such as: create collages, annotate, and even used for digital storytelling.  Best of all, a ThingLink image can be embedded into a site or blog.

Below is an example of a ThingLink image...



I highly recommend checking out ThingLink by clicking here!!!