I used Big Huge Labs fd flickrtoys to play around for a while today. I had wondered how to make a replacement image for my wordpress (AKA "other" blog) and found one of those as well as a few other cool tools.
I used to do yearbook advisor in my "spare" time in my first library job. It was more like my life it seemed at times. The class of 1997 had a great vision for what they wanted their yearbook to be. We met with an artist from our publisher and talked about it, but it never really ended up being what the editor-in-chief had in mind. He wanted something similar to Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe prints: fd flickertoys will do it. That cover came out okay, but it really just didn't measure up to Peter's lofty plan. This absolutely would have done it for him--and I bet there are schools using many of these tools for just that sort of thing. There are so many tools that would have made our lives much easier back then!
Other options that would be useful from this image generator are the poster, badge, magazine cover, mosaics, CD cover and movie poster makers. Some of these would be especially useful for a project my music teacher is planning with her students (involving research!) I will be sharing this with her for sure.
I tried to use the Comic Strip Generator and while the main page was accessible any of the links were blocked, so I can't use this from school without bypassing the filter. I prefer not to do it; the kids use vtunnel and some of my colleagues do too. I've got an administrator password, but it's not my own, so I'll skip testing this, at least from school. I am frequently disappointed by our lack of access to web resources due to overblocking.
It truly is amazing what we can now do with such ease with tools like these image generators. They are so much fun and useful at the same time. Someone asked me what we would do if they weren't free to use anymore. I didn't have an answer, other than someone will surely create new things to take their place.
ReplyDeleteYou're doing great on the 23 things and I look forward to your future posts.