Blog+Challenge+5

=Challenge 5: Improving your posts = Posted by [|Miss W.] on Sunday, October 9th 2011  [|Share] | 

So this week is all about images as a way to improve your posts. Images certainly make posts more interesting to read especially when the image relates to the information in the post.

 **Can you use any images that are on the internet?** The answer is definitely NO!!  **But can’t I just go to Google search and use images from there?** The answer is definitely NO!! You need to go to advanced search and under usage rights choose use images that can be re-used. Not all images on the internet are free for everyone to use. Some newspapers have paid a lot of money for a photographer to take images for their newspaper articles and if you want to use these images, you might have to pay money to either the newspaper or photographer. These photos are usually called **COPYRIGHT**. But there are some photographers who take photos that are free for others to re-use or mix or use for public display. These images have a **CREATIVE COMMONS** license. Check out this website for information about Creative Commons. Each country has slightly different licenses. If you get images from Flickr, then here are what the different licenses mean (Thanks Sue Waters from Edublog s for this image)  Notice, whatever license you use, you HAVE to attribute the original author. This means you have to acknowledge the person who created the original image. At the end your blog post, or linked within the post, you must attribute the image and you must link the photo back to it’s original photo page.  **Well, how can I safely find images to use in my posts?** Check out Miss T’s blog for lots of places to get photos. They might not all be creative commons so be careful to check out the license involved.  When using flickrcc, you right click on the photo and copy the image location or image URL. Paste this in first when you upload. Then choose where photo will be on post: left or right are good choices. Now go back to the image on flickrcc and copy the http:// part above the photo. Put this in the section: link image to. Remember finally to add the attribution at the end of the post. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">When using Compfight, make sure on the left sidebar you have the following in black: tags only, creative commons, show originals and safe. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Once you have found an image you want to use, click on it. You will now go to the image in flickr. Make sure you only use the small or medium size image. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">When using Pics4Learning the images are often very large. You might have to download to your computer hard drive, then resize. Remember still to give attribution about where you found the image. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> **Attribution for images used in this part of the post.** <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">‘ [|Happy Holidays from me and this dog] ‘ by Zach Klein <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> Creative commons license by Sue Waters <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> Los Angeles from the air by Marshall Astor <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> Establishing Shot: The 405 by Atwater Village Newbie <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> Mission Beach Boardwalk by Melinda Kolk

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> **Students and classes** <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">** So here are nine (9) activities relating to images. You must do activity 1 as this will help for the other choices. **

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> **Activity 1 – **Visit these blogs**** <span style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;"> <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> **Activity 2 – Using tags to find images and adding them to posts** <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">** Teachers :** You might be interested in checking out these: resources using flickr, telling stories with images, photo books , photo slideshow , copyright friendly links , photovisi is a collage, paint the world a picture blog post. Here is a link to a great YouTube on Fair(y) use – a parody using Disney films. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">** Students :** Last week we looked at using categories in our blogs, now we are going to use tags (which are similar) to find images. Below are some great websites to use that have images with creative commons licenses. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> Wylio – need to have a Google account with a Picasa Web Album to store the images you use <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> Comp fight – See below (attribution) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> Flickrcc – above the image (attribution) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> Morguefile, Pics4Learning , using Google search with creative commons, <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">This next section of the post has been written by Sue Waters from Edublogs as part of the teacher challenge held earlier this year. She has also mentioned about the attribution and where to find it in the site. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">1. Go to [|Compfight] <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">2. Change to Creative Commons only, choose whether to search tags or text, add your search term and click Search. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">3. Scan through the search results and click on the Photo you like so that you can view it on its photo page on Flickr. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">4. Scroll down right hand side of photo page to view License. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">5. Hold your Ctrl key and left mouse click on “**Some Rights Reserved**” to open up the license on a new browser tab to read terms of its license on Creative Commons. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">6. Now select **View All Sizes** from the drop down Action list and select the size of the photo you want to use. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">7. Right click on Image and select Copy Image Location or Copy Image URL (depends on what web browser you are using). <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">8. Now go to the post you are writing inside your dashboard and click on **Add an Image** icon <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">9 In the Add an Image window click on the **From URL** tab
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> Kathleen Morris who expects her Grade 2 students to know about and use creative commons and giving attribution when using images in their blogs. She uses FlickrCC which is not blocked at her school and gives instructions for using with Edublogs blogs. Check out her slideshow in the box.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> Ronnie Burt from the Edublogs team who gives ideas for using images other than FlickrCC.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> Sue Waters from The Edublogger who also gives out some easy instructions on inserting images from your computer, an URL from the web and from your media library.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> Allanah King, New Zealand . Lots of hints for students **using blogspot**.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Only use if license is applicable for your situation.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">10. Add the image URL, image title, select the image alignment, add the URL of its Flickr photo page to the Link Image URL field and then click **Insert Into Post** <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">11. Add the photo attribution either below the photo or at the end of your blog post. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">**Example 1:** <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Photo by [|Darwin Bell] licensed under [|Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic]. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">**Example 2:** <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; display: block; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Original image: ‘swinger_girl_01b‘ <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; display: block; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">http://www.flickr.com/photos/82546262@N00/205492421 <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; display: block; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Original image: ‘ [|a piggy in the middle] ‘ <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Released under a [|Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic] License <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">**Please note:** <span style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;"> <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> **Activity 3 – Color a post** <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Write a post about your favourite color and include at least three images. Remember to resize them to small or no bigger than about 400 pixels in width. Remember to explain why you chose those particular images and include the attribution correctly.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">In this example the URL of its Flickr photo page is []
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">You link to its Flickr photo page as it is a requirement of Flickr’s conditions of use and so that if any one clicks on the photo they can view the original source of the image.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">It’s a requirement of all Creative Commons Licenses that you attribute the original author.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">This means you can’t just use a creative commons image without acknowledging the person who originally created it.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">The text below this photo is are examples of how you can attribute an image — look closely at what websites the attributions links to!
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Some School Districts block Flickr
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">In these types of situations you’ll need to download the photo onto your computer and then upload it to your blog post. Even if you have downloaded to your computer, you will still need to give correct attribution.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> **Activity 4 – Create your own images and add to a post of your choice** <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Other options for creating your own images include: <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Mixing up your images using these types of tools can really spice up your posts! Leave a comment on this post, if you or your class can recommend some other image sites to add to this list.
 * 1) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Image Generators such as [|ImageGenerator.org]
 * 2) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Comic Generators like [|MakeBeliefsComix.com], [|kerpoof] , [|ToonDoo]
 * 3) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Photo Editors like [|Befunky], [|fd’s Flickr Tools]
 * 4) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Tag Cloud Creators such as [|Wordle]
 * 5) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Graph Creators including [|GraphJam] and [|Crappy Graphs]

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> **Activity 5 – Zoom out from an image** <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">We tried this activity in the challenge in September 2010. Choose a picture, and have your readers zoom out, so to speak, by leaving comments. So maybe something simple, like a pillow, and the first commenter describes something bigger around the pillow (like a couch) and the next commenter would write about the room it was in, and the next could zoom out the window and do the house, etc. If doing this activity, include the word ‘zoom’ in your title so I can find it easily. Remember to give attribution. Most important here is to read previous comments, so you can add to the story. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Check out these zoom pictures: Becky, Jacqueline , Abbey , Teegan , <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> Huzzah finished their story.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> **Activity 6 – Pictures tell the story – no words** <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> Here is a post on how to create a gallery in your blog. **Create a visual post** using no more than eight images – where the images tell a story. Remember to give attribution for the images you used. No writing in this post other than the title and attribution.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> **Activity 7 – Tell the story of the picture** <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">From Bill Ferreirae – I sometime find a picture and tell students to **use that picture to come up with a story**. It can be about the picture, what happened before, what will happen next, etc. So, at the top of this post is the image I have chosen for you to start with. Copy the image to your post, then write the story. Remember to give attribution. If you don’t have your own blog, tell your story in a comment here.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> **Activity 8 – Create an animated photo show** <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Think of a theme, try adding images to [|animoto], [|slide] or other online image animators. Add music, transitions, text etc. Grab the resultant code and add to your blog post.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> **Activity 9 – Write a sentence using image****s** – no writing <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">Write a sentence about yourself using just images. For example – I love to read comic books. Remember to give attribution for each image and in the title use the word ‘sentence’ to make it easier for me to find.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;"> **Activity 10 – Go back to previous posts** <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 1em;">If you have used images in any previous posts you have written, then you are ethically obliged to go back to the post and give the correct attribution or take the image out of the post if it does not have the right creative commons license.