I have to admit: The discovery exercise for this "thing" was the most fun I've had so far. As you can see above, I used Spell with Flickr to create a banner of Flickr images spelling out my blog's title. I also played with several of the "Flickr toys" at BigHugeLabs and produced several different pieces. Take a look after the jump!
The first toy over at BigHugeLabs that caught my attention was the LOLCat Generator; as a fan of the lolcat meme*, I could not resist making a lolcat of my own, Shotgun Kitteh:
I also got a chance to play around with the Blog Header creator. Using a picture I had uploaded to Flickr of one of my family's bookcases, I created this blog header that I may use in the future:
I can see using similar web app/mashup tools in the future, both personally and in the classroom. For personal use, the mashup tools are just too fun not to use at least occasionally. In the classroom, I can see a number of uses as well. At BigHugeLabs, they have a custom Badge Maker tool that would make a fun way to learn students' names, as you could make (or if they are older, have the students make) classroom ID badges. There are also tools to make custom calendars, CD/DVD covers, parody magazine covers and movie posters, and much more. I could see making calendars from student/classroom photos, or having students make a magazine cover or movie poster about a topic, like this one:
I can see using similar web app/mashup tools in the future, both personally and in the classroom. For personal use, the mashup tools are just too fun not to use at least occasionally. In the classroom, I can see a number of uses as well. At BigHugeLabs, they have a custom Badge Maker tool that would make a fun way to learn students' names, as you could make (or if they are older, have the students make) classroom ID badges. There are also tools to make custom calendars, CD/DVD covers, parody magazine covers and movie posters, and much more. I could see making calendars from student/classroom photos, or having students make a magazine cover or movie poster about a topic, like this one:
*If you have no idea what a lolcat is, or wonder why the English in my photo is so horribly mangled, you can educate yourself over at icanhascheezburger.com.
The cat is really funny. How hard is this for the non-tech person?
ReplyDeleteIt's actually really easy. All the tools at BigHugeLabs have Flickr integration, or you can upload a picture from your computer, though that takes a lot longer. You just choose the picture you want, fill in the fields on the page, then hit "Submit" to see a preview of your finished mash-up image. If you don't like it, just hit the "Edit" button to go back and fix it, or if you do like it, hit "Save" to save a copy to your computer or "Share" to share it on Flickr or Blogger.
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