teAchnology

teAchnology is a great site for teachers and the link I have created just happens to take you to a lot of graphing resources, which would be a good help if you happen to be a Maths teacher. That is the whole point of teAchnology, it is a site which offers a constant set of electronic resources to take the burden out of electronic lessons. There is plenty of ready made useful material. If you sign up for the emails, then all this helpful information comes straight to your inbox and that is the easiest way I have found of keeping up to date with this site. It is very positive, very practical and very enthusiastic so it’s a good site to know !

PicArtia

PicArtia is an online mosaic creating tool. You can buy a higher resolution copy of the finished mosaic if you want so that you can produce a high quality print. Why? The mosaics are very different and very clever and would make a pretty cool present, or again, an individual work of art that you can customise for your own needs. If not you just get the free online version sent to your email address and I’ll show you what I did:

1. I watched the online tutorial which takes about 2 mins on the PicArtia site.
2. I uploaded this photo which I had reduced to 25% of its original size. It just happens to be the same photo I used on the Repper site.
3. I followed the instructions and waited for the code to be delivered to my email account.

4. I cut and pasted the code and downloaded my mosaic.
5. I had chosen the flower option for the mosaic so my original picture has been created into a mosaic using teeny tiny flowers. How cool is that?!

Art of Illusion

I am a big fan of cross platform software. Choose the operating system which suits you and your needs, because that is what it boils down to, and then get the software you want. In our current climate we often have to go cross platform because we choose our OS at home and then there is a different one at work…or one for one system and another for another system. Cross platform software means you can choose your software and work with what you want and then the OS is not an issue. Art of Illusion is free , cross platform software which is a 3D modelling and rendering studio. If you take a look at the screenshots and gallery sections of the site you will see if is a very capable piece of software. You cannot just fudge it. You have to know what you are doing but there is help. The site is also an opportunity to explore and share this software with others and more and more the sharing and community approach to learning is becoming normal and that’s good. The contribution part of the site here and there are opportunities to do all sorts of things to help develop The Art Of Illusion, not the least of which is to contribute to tutorials. I really need those tutorials!! There is pressure for us to be able to do everything on a computer and we cannot…not without help.