Image Capture and Processing

Still images are static pictures of anything you can get in front of a camera.  They can be natural or artificial; show broad scale vistas or tight close-ups.  Images can be captured with a digital camera, or scanned into a digital file.  Once you have an image, you can use additional programs to process the image (crop, resize, color balance, special effects). You can also create a deck or series of images and make your own animated gif using programs such as Gickr, Picasion, and Gifcon.  Many imaging programs also include animation programs including Paint Shop Pro, Adobe Photoshop, and others.  A nice introduction is Stevemd's Gif Animation site.

Typical editing programs include Adobe Photoshop, Paint, and iPhoto.

You can share images on the web via Flickr, Picasa, Bubbleshare, and Slide.

Still images can be used in so many ways that it's hard to know where to start. Some ideas:

• A carefully chosen provacative image can be used as an anticipatory set (brain warm-up) at the beginning of a class or topic
• An annotated image can serve as an assessment tool.
• Images can document student projects.
• Add your ideas!

Animoto 

And here's a fun tool to try:  Animoto.  This one takes your uploaded photos along with music of your choice and mixes it into a high-production-value video clip that looks a lot like a movie trailer.  The resulting video can be emailed to people, posted on your web site, or downloaded for your use in other settings.  It's an easy way to get a professional quality "short" to use on your site, in a blog, or to dress up a PPT presentation. The service is free.  You just sign up, upload your pictures, pick a song and away you go.