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10 Best Image Sources For Creative Projects

January 2, 2010 by admin · 2 Comments 

Educating students (and lets face it, ourselves) about copyright and digital citizenship has become increasingly more important as more and more teaching resources are found online.  While creating original image content may still be the best way to gather images, it is not always practical or even geographically realistic. Copyright-free and public domain images often make the creative process easer by allowing for manipulation without needing to cite the source.  However, there are times when when you can’t find what you need in the public domain or want to teach a lesson on digital citizenship.  In these situations, searching for images with a Creative Commons license can be useful.  Our top ten list of imagery for creative use ranges from “no known copyright” (among the least restrictive) to Creative Commons (creative permissions vary).

1. The Commons This Flickr database contains collections from museums and libraries from around the world.  The images placed in these collections have “no known copyright” and therefore are free to use without attribution.

2. Public Domain Sherpa This is a one stop shop with a great collection of image sources mostly in the public domain. This site also does a great job explaining copyright information in layman’s terms.

3. Morgue File “Public image archive for creatives by creatives”  This fabulous site is full of easily searchable images that require no attribution.

4. Pics4Learning These copyright-friendly images have been donated by teachers, students, and amateur photographers.  Explore the other features and tutorials to help get you started.

5. PD Photo Most of the thousands of images on this site are in public domain, but not all.  Before using any image, read the license under each picture.

6. Creative Commons and Wikimedia Commons These databases are great places to access all sorts of media that you can incorporate into creative projects.  Since both public domain and creative commons images can turn up in a search, be sure to check to see if the image requires attribution.

7. Photos8 This site offers thousands of images free to use for any purpose. The site author doesn’t require attribution but would love to see the creative outcomes.

8. Creativity 103 This source contains images and video ranging from abstract design to architecture.  You are free to download and use any of the images as long as you credit the website.

9. Compflight and FlickrCC These two great tools can help you quickly find images licensed under Creative Commons on Flickr.  Another Flickr option is the advanced search to find images to modify or build upon. Download directions for use with your students here.

10. Google Advanced Image Search This search engine is useful for helping you find specific images such as line drawing or photo content with “safe search” filtering.  To find Creative Commons images, select the search terms usage rights “labeled for reuse” or “reuse with modification”.

Oh, and a couple of things that you will want to explore . . .

Creative Project Image Search We gathered many resources listed here along with a few others to create a custom search engine for public domain, copyright-friendly, and Creative Commons images.  This tool could be something you add to student bookmarks to make image searching easy.

If you still can’t find what you need, Copyright Friendly Wiki and Teacher Librarian Wiki are both excellent resources to find images to use.

Teaching Palette on Facebook!

December 13, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment 

The Teaching Palette is now on Facebook!  With 350 million Facebook users we thought it would be a great place to connect.  We’ll update you on new posts, occasionally pull favorites from our archives, and share insights from around the world.  Become a fan and use the space as a place to leave comments or suggest ideas for us to write about.  We love art education and sharing with all of you!

Museum Manners

November 18, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment 

Art museum visits and art history discussions can be great learning opportunities for students.  However, it just takes a few negative student attitudes to change the experience for the entire class. The following Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) video addresses many art conversations and museum etiquette issues in an entertaining format directed at tweens and teens.

Can’t view YouTube video above? See it at the AIC website.

Possible Discussion Questions:
1. What did you learn about visiting a museum that you didn’t know before?
2. Why might each artwork have different meanings to different people?
3. What type of art do you like best? Why?

Whole Brain Teaching

October 1, 2009 by admin · 6 Comments 

The following is a guest post written by Katie Jarvis. She has been teaching art for nine years and currently teaches at Cameron Elementary in Alexandria, Virginia.

At the beginning of every year, art teacher’s everywhere make up a “rules poster” to review with students on the first day of classes. Throughout the year I would find that the students would claim to forget or not know the rules. While researching art room rules last year I came across a teacher on Youtube, Chris Biffle, a college professor who taught what he called Whole Brain Teaching.

How does it work? At the beginning of every class the students and I recite the art room rules. The rules have hand motions and each week we change the style in which we say them- squeaky voice, deep voice, sad, happy, fast, cowboy, etc. The kids love it! In fact if I try to skip over doing the rules even my 6th graders complain.

I created a video to illustrate how I teach these rules on the first day of art.  Trouble viewing video below? Click here.

There is also a scoreboard to help with classroom management. I mark “smiley faces” and  ”sad faces” on the board as the class earns them (see monkeys in image on left). When the class earns a smile they get to cheer. When the class earns a sad face everyone groans.  The points are tallied at the end of each class and a gold paintbrush is awarded for more smiles than frowns, a silver paintbrush for an equal number of smiles and frowns, or no brush for more frowns than smiles. Four paintbrushes earn the class a free art day. Each silver brush is worth 1/2 a gold brush (2 silvers = 1 gold)

The most effective tool I’ve learned from Whole Brain Teaching is getting the students attention. When I say “Class” they say “Yes!” I vary the way I say class to keep them on their toes. For example if I say “Classsity, Class” they respond “Yessity, yes!”

Whole Brain Teaching involves lots of hand gestures and verbal responses from students to keep them engaged and entertained. Using WBT creates a “peaceful classroom full of orderly fun”. Students have more fun following my rules, since I switched to Whole Brain Teaching, rather than ignoring them.

Happy Birthday Teaching Palette!

September 25, 2009 by admin · 2 Comments 

We made it!  One year old and we have grown in so many ways. Here’s a little history on how our blog started:

Email from Hillary to Theresa (Labor day weekend 2008): “What do you think about starting a blog where we can post all our classroom management stuff ?”

Yea, we’ve come a long way since that email. Our primary goal was to favor quality over quantity (which also coincidentally matches our teaching styles).

So, we started with classroom management, music + art integration, and product reviews. It was a great focus (and we still try and discuss these topics often), yet we expanded even further. We invited YOU to join us. (Thank you to everyone who has been a guest author!!) We added lots of web 2.0 tools, advocated for the arts, and added things just cool and creative.

We have also expanded our readership (thank you everyone!). Our email subscriptions doubled over the summer. Therefore, since many of our new readers missed our infant stages (which we still think are useful), we decided to celebrate our 1st birthday with a few of our favorites from the archives:

Theresa’s personal favorites:
The Clean-Up Map – Inspired by Dora the Explorer (yes, kids CAN follow directions!?!)

Photography as Art and History – Just love the contrast in music and imagery over this 100 year span.

Hillary’s personal favorites:
The Magic Pocket Name – Love how this simple technique can be so effective in the art room!

American Revolution Portraitist – It’s exciting to make connections between American history, art and music.

Art Room Showcase 2009

September 18, 2009 by admin · 4 Comments 

When we launched The Teaching Palette back on September 29, 2008 (almost one year ago), one of our goals was to create a place where other art educators could share their ideas and successes.  With the start of the new school year, we came up with the “Show Us Your Art Room” feature.

Well, here it is… the creative spaces submitted by art educators around the globe and assembled into one Art Room Showcase (2009 edition). We hope art teachers will be inspired for their own spaces!

In addition to any comments you leave here, we’d like to encourage you to also leave comments in the flickr art room gallery.  Below is a nifty Flickr widget highlighting some of the art room entries.  Click any image for a close-up.

Thank you to the following art educators who shared images of their 2009 art spaces:

1. Laura Carey (winner, as seen on our home page – the shopping cart)
2. Myrna Ellison (winner, as seen on our home page – the castle)
3. Matt Cauthron (winner, as seen on our home page – the digital studio)
4. Lori Wilson
5. Elizabeth Burns
6. Frank Curkovic
7. Brooke Nicholson
8. Tara Conover
9. Tricia Fuglestad
10. Denise Pannell
11. Jessica Houston
12. Emily Valenza
13. Tana Puppe
14. Susan Bivona
15. Katie Balla
16. Keith Chapman
17. Matt Cauthron
18. Amy Kratochvil
19. Kristen Grzemski
20. Carol Frueh
21. Katie Jarvis
22. Myrna Ellison
23. Christy Branham
24. Katherine Malone-Smith
25. Maria Smith
26. Laura Carey
27. Julie Vladika
28. Theresa McGee
29. Hillary Andrlik
30. Brooke Nicholson

Do you have an art space to share? We can add it to our Flickr pool! Email photos to info@theteachingpalette.com

Scholastic Instructor Top 20

September 17, 2009 by admin · 2 Comments 

Today we discovered that Scholastic Instructor named The Teaching Palette one of the Top 20 Teacher Blogs!  A huge thank you to all our readers who have inspired us to keep writing about issues that impact the art education field!

Other blogs listed among the Top 20:

• Mrs. Cassidy’s Classroom Blog
• TEACHFOR.US
• Docere Est Discere
• Needleworks Pictures
• Integrating Tech
• Digital Anthology
• Science Fix
• Principals Page
• A Year of Reading
• Youth Voices
• It’s Not All Flowers and Sausages
• Regurgitated Alpha Bits
• Techno Tuesday
• Classroom solutions
• Just a Substitute Teacher
• Hooda Math Blog
• Learning is Messy
• The Jose Vilson
• Tales From the School Bus

Posts You May Have Missed During the Summer

August 30, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment 

• Show Us Your Art Room – Have you set up your art classroom? Snap a picture for other art teachers to see!  (Don’t be shy, show us even a great corner of your room!) Submit by 9/15.
• A Great Solution for Bookmarking Web Images – Gather and tag images for instruction from any web source in one spot.
• The 30 Best iPhone Apps for Art Teachers – 3,500 page views in less than a month – guess you like it.  Can you add to our list?
• Review:  IKEA Dignitet Curtain Wire and Clips – A great review submitted by one of our readers, Anni Lyzenga.  Join us as a guest contributor and add your own review! Read other product reviews here.
• Delicious Denial – If your goal is to get organized this year, this bookmarking tool is the perfect way to start.
• An Alternative to Adobe: Avery’s Free Design Tools – No funds available to purchase Photoshop or Illustrator?  This online tool can help!
• The Art Institute of Chicago Launches Interactive Website – New on the scene this summer, the AIC offers this online game to teach art concepts.
• The Importance of Art in Education -  Watch a great art advocacy video and show it at your open house or curriculum night this year.  Links to helpful articles are included as well.

Never miss a post again.  Receive a email when new content is posted (we promise, no spam)!

Show Us Your Art Room!

August 12, 2009 by admin · 4 Comments 

It’s that time of the year again.  Over the next couple weeks, most of our readers will be preparing their art classrooms for the new school year.  Wouldn’t it be great to see the creative spaces of other art teachers around the country… or around the world for that matter?  Well this is your chance to share your art space… and see others.

By September 15, send a photo of your decked-out art classroom to info@theteachingpalette.com. We’ll compile all the art classroom photos into one showcase post.  Think HGTV for the art classroom.  We’ll also feature one or two lucky photos on our home page as the new “cover art” for The Teaching Palette.

Regardless of what level you teach, we want to see what you have done with the space you were given, even if it is on a cart or in the corner of a gym. In the end, we hope to receive enough photos to make a healthy online gallery so art teachers around the globe can be inspired for their own spaces.  Now go snap some photos!

The 30 Best iPhone Apps for Art Teachers

August 3, 2009 by admin · 10 Comments 

Since the launch of the iTunes App Store in July 2008, over 1 billion apps have been downloaded for use on the iTouch and iPhone.  Currently, the App Store has 63,000 apps to choose from and it is no surprise that many of the iPhone/iTouch applications have educational value.  Over the last few weeks, we sorted through our favorites to create The Teaching Palette’s Best Apps for Art Teachers, along with some tips and suggested uses.

1. Love Art-Natl Gallery London This is an absolutely beautiful museum app that integrates audio and video presentations based on the collections in the museum.  A great learning tool containing snapshots of a wide range of art history.
2. Brushes Familiar with the New Yorker Cover that was created using an iPhone app?  It was created with the Brushes painting app and tops our list. Easy to use beginning with the very young. Watch a speed portrait here.
3. TypeDrawing Draw with text. This fun app uses a single letter or phrase as the drawing tool. A completely new way of drawing (and thinking about drawing). See some examples in this Flickr pool.
4. TanZen Familiar with Tangrams?  This app combines math and art concepts together.  Move, rotate, and flip shapes to form a larger image. Great for improving spatial intelligence.
5. Art (Lite version) This art history game features five famous artists.  Can you identify which artist created each work of art? Master this app, then upgrade to the paid version of Art. Another nice feature of this app is the option to load images into your photo gallery for use in other applications.
6. Art2Go This app is an engaging and useful presentation of 19th and early 20th century artists and their work using audio commentary. Useful for all grade levels and art backgrounds.
7. Color Splash This is an extremely simple app to use with some amazing effects.  Teach the principle of emphasis by isolating a single image in color while the remainder of the photograph stands in black and white. See how easy this app is to use in this video tutorial.
8. Animoto Near identical to the traditional web-based version, Animoto coordinates your images to the beat of music.  Great for artist presentations or student portfolios. Completed presentations can be downloaded or emailed.
9. FlipBook (Lite version) This is one of the best animation apps available.  Features allow for replication of images and transparency effects to see previous slide. Click here for a guided tour of the app.
10. PixPop Art – This is a challenging and very fun detail detective game. Utilizing fine art, detail images line the right side of the screen while you search for the match. Work in competition mode timing yourself or work at your own pace in Zen mode.

1. 3D gallery Be a curator of your own museum.  Enter this 3-D room and rearrange the paintings or choose your own images from photo gallery.  This would be a great tool to display artwork created throughout the year or to focus on an art time period or genre. Note: There is currently no “save” feature, but if you click your on/off button at the same time as the menu button, you can create a screenshot that saves in photos on the camera roll.
2. Comic Touch (Lite version) Add some humor to art historical images or commentary to student artwork with this single pane comic creator. Save to photo library or email. Upgrade to the paid version of Comic Touch and get interesting special effects and fonts. Watch an intro video here.
3. Life Strips This is a great tool for creating comic strips.  Utilizes a wide variety of comic strip templates and speech bubbles. Add photos and utilize filters to for adding special effects. Even add a Google map!
4. Light Painting Have you ever created a photographic light painting?  While standard flashlights and LED lights work fine, this app offers additional light features otherwise hard to replicate. Use these tips and tricks to get started.
5. Open Culture - Find a nice group of audio and video podcasts from well known art museums in the “ideas and culture” category.  The same category also contains animated New Yorker cartoons.
6. AP Mobile Create a search for “Art” and get the latest news articles from around the world.  Useful app for older students to reflect on culture and current events.
7. Jazz Sculptor Utilize a wide variety of virtual materials and textures to carve a sculpture from a variety of forms.  Rotate image to view at a 360 degree angle.  Nice exercise to understand the subtractive carving process. See the Jazz Sculptor gallery for inspiration.
8. ScuptMaster3D Create three-dimensional art using a variety of colors with this virtual material that appears inspired by Henry Moore.  Great way to introduce and reinforce positive and negative space concepts. View this video tutorial for an overview.
9. Architect Envi Deluxe – This app organizes architecture by building name, architect, or century created.  It is presented in a slide-show format with the option to learn more about the building and save in the camera roll for use/manipulation in other applications.  Yet, the best feature of this app is the option to view each architectural structure in Google Maps.
10. Color Sudoku Forget the numbers – this is Sudoku in color!  Game has a different levels of difficulty and color schemes.

1. Eyetricks This app has a nice collection of optical illusions.  Good for early finishers or as intro to an OP Art unit.
2. Color Wheel -This color wheel uses advanced color theory concepts to reinforce color understanding. Useful interactive app for older students.
3. Brooklyn Museum Tour the collection of art at the Brooklyn Museum.  ”Randomize” is a nice feature to view artwork you might otherwise miss.
4. Symmetry Useful tool for teaching symmetry to younger students. Watch this video for a quick demo.
5. MovieMaker This is a great tool for creating stop-motion animations and time-lapse movies. Since it requires the camera on an iPhone, this app is perhaps most useful as an extension for students who have access to iPhone technology.
6. PotteryWheel While this is certainly not a a replacement for the hands-on wheel throwing experience, this pottery wheel gives the basic idea of the cause and effect.
7. Artist’s Touch This app requires little artistic talent but is useful when teaching about abstract art.  Non-objective to representational- reveal your image using a variety of textures and paint tools. Be sure to watch video tutorial to get started.
8. Google Earth This is a great app to integrate geographic locations of artists or cultures. Watch this video tutorial to get started.
9. Gallery of Painters Contains a large collection of artists that can be searched alphabetically, by century, or nationality. View basic information or link directly to Wikipedia for detail information.  Useful for research.
10. Juxtaposer and Juxtaposer Lite This is a fun tool for teaching about Surrealism. Reinforce juxtaposition  by taking a photo of your classroom and a selecting objects from a second photo to create a Magritte-like composition. Watch this video review to see what this app can do.

Ok . . so now what?  Here are some additional tips and considerations to start using the apps:

• Not all the apps are free, but once purchased, an app can be used on multiple iTouch’s with no additional charge.
• Most schools do not have access to multiple iTouch’s (yet). But even just one iTouch can be used as an extension for an early finisher or projected on a screen for the entire class to view using a document camera.
• Some students may have access to a personal iTouch or even a parent’s iPhone.  Create a recommended app list for these students to try out at home. You could even tie it into an extra credit option.
• Use it yourself to create your own art or brush up on art history.
• Find useful tips, reviews, and connect with other educators using apps in education at IEAR.org

What are your favorite apps for art education?

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