Photo Apps for the 2.0 Classroom

While most people think of text when they think of literacy, visual literacy is just as important. This clearly comes across when one looks into CCSS. At a recent Discovery DENin in Irvine, teachers from across the country spent time examining the CCSS and tech integration. One of the sessions was APP Hour. I had never participated in one before. Teachers went up and shared an app that they used in the classroom. There were teachers, tech coordinators, and librarians from both public and private schools servicing Special Education, general, and GATE students. I was blown away by the photo apps being utilized by the lower grade teachers and how they were using them to demonstrate visual literacy, by themselves as well as by the students.

Photos give students a creative way to demonstrate their knowledge of a concept. In fact, it can be more challenging at times to select the correct images to tell the story. Teachers would sometimes use the images as collages for intro of a unit, do now to connect to the night prior's reading or previous day's material, or have the students create one for a given topic. Photos are a powerful way to tell a story, especially given the visual nature of today's students. Below are a few of the photo apps shared.

Pic Collage

PicCollage lets you instantly arrange your photos into frames - or get creative with freeform collages, cutouts, filters, borders, stickers, and text. Your friends will be amazed with what you can create. It's like photoshop with your fingers!

Instapicframe
Instapic frame helps you combine multiple photos into amazing looking shells/frames/collage and share them with world via Instagram, Facebook, Email, Twitter. With 55 fully adjustable frames, rounded corners, photo effects, shadows, plenty of patterns and an easy color picker you will always have a unique and distinctive look.

Strip Designer

Add photos from your photo album or draw your own sketches. Apply simple image filters to increase the impact of photos, and add speech balloons Add advanced textual elements and stickers to get that genuine comic book feel. When you are done, save the resulting image to the iPhone's photo album, email it to friends and family or share it with Flickr, Facebook, or twitter.

Type Drawing
TypeDrawing is a really easy app to use, but it's perfect for creating TYPOGRAPHY ART and UNIQUE WATERMARK over your photos. If you love typography, this poetic visual art app is absolutely yours. Start by typing a sentence you want to say, and then just draw with your finger. This simple action leads you to make stunning typography arts and wallpapers

Word Salad
Make great wordsalads out of documents that matter (or not) to you! With WordSalad you can make beautiful word clouds, super customized with different fonts, colors and words layouts.