Fun On Friday #103: Fun with photos

I was surprised to find I haven't featured Dumpr here before. Another site with a silly name - I can understand dropping the "e" since the site links with Flikr... but "dumper"? I don't get it.

To me, Dumpr sounds like you are throwing stuff away, being destructive, but this site allows you to add value and be creative. Essentially, you give it a picture and the site manipulates it in interesting ways. For example, how about a Rubik's Dog:


Or, pictures at an exhibition:


There are twenty-one different effects you can apply and you can upload photos from your hard disk, or pull them in from facebook, Picasa, Flickr or a Web URL.

So what are you waiting for, go and have some fun with photos... And if you do, remember to share your creations by posting a link to them here.

Fun on Friday #71: Word Game

I've been slightly obsessed with a word game on my iPhone. So, the this week's Fun on Friday is about:

I can't find an online equivalent to my iPhone game but the anagram game Eight Letters... is reasonably addictive. It is a Flash game and your challenge is to form as many words as possible with eight letters in a set time. A simple idea that I find surprisingly addictive.

And since this week's Fun On Friday is late, here's a second - a two for one. The graphic used above was created at the Spell With Flickr site. Enjoy!

The BEd Students Tell A Story

Last week the BEd students were telling stories in five frames. If you are signed up for Flickr and the appropriate Flickr group, you should be able to see there work here:

• Kicked Out!
• The Story of an Autumn Leaf
• Day at Jordanhill

If you can't see the group, the photos are public so you can see them in the students' photostreams:

• Kicked out! - Photo 1
  
• The Story of an Autumn Leaf - Photo 1
• Day at Jordanhill - Photo 1
  

Please drop by and leave them a comment.

Fun on Friday #34: Tag Galaxy

I have a feeling that Tag Galaxy is fun rather than functional but what ever else it is, it is beautiful!

Essentially it is a graphical interface that lets you search for Flickr photographs. Enter a tag, search for it and after a pause a sun is displayed with some planets orbiting it. Each planet is labelled with a tag related to the one you searched for.


For example, this animated solar system is what was produced when I searched for Glasgow. Once you have set of planets, clicking a planet will add that tag to your search and the combined tags will merge to form a new sun with a new set of related tags. When you are happy that you have narrowed down your search sufficiently, clicking on the sun will fetch the related photos and form them into a globe that can be spun to browse the pictures. Clicking on a photo will pop up a larger version of the relevant picture and an option to go to the relevant Flickr page.

Have fun and let me know what you think of it.

Telling Tales with Flickr

Took a class today on using Flickr in school. Thought the handout I used would (with minor alterations) give me a good reason to play with Scribd:

Telling Tales with Flickr

Get your own at Scribd or explore others: Education Teaching edcompblog flicktion

What do you think? Comments and suggestions welcome. ...And remember to let me know in a comment if you have a go at writing some Fliction.

Fun on Friday #6: I want to tell you a story

Two fun story telling links this week.

The first is a great invention from CogDogBlog - a Five Card Story site. A great idea for getting the creative juices going. The idea is simple, first, choose an image from five randomly presented photographs. After the first image is chosen, another five images are presented and you choose the next image. This is repeated until you have chosen five picture. Then, you write a story inspired by the five images. Simple and fun!

Here's one we wrote during a lecture where the students chose the images and suggested the story as we went along:

Click on the photo to go to the story page. I also had a couple of goes myself: If you want to get ahead... and Generation C.

One final neat feature is, if you tag a Flickr photo with 5cardflickr, it will be added to the pool of photos the five card story site draws from. Excellent!

The second story site was brought to my attention by Mr W. It is the National Novel Writing Month website. Again, a simple idea - write a novel in a month - but a difficult task. I'm not sure I'd cope with writing a novel in a year, never mind a month, but there are some fun ideas to inspire young writers. Like Neil, I especially like the Dare Machine.

So, have some fun writing something... And don't forget to share the results here. :-)

Guitar Throwdown

I should start by saying that a Guitar Throwdown is not as bad,or potentially expensive, as it first sounds. (This is a quick post about another interesting educational use for YouTube I came across.)

Throwdown is used here in the sense of throwing down a challenge. The roots may be from the world of rap but I can't find a definition on the web, so I can't confirm this. I came across it in this guitar throwdown from Newton Faulkner:



Hows that for a challenge? Your music pupils could take on Newton in a guitar throwdown! OK, perhaps Netwon might be a bit too high a target for some... but what about inter-school throwdowns?

It doesn't have to be limited to guitars either. Other instruments could be used. (A recorder throwdown?) It doesn't even have to be music based. Why not have a poetry throwdown, or an art throwdown, or a mime throwdown... OK mime might not be a good idea but you get the drift. One school/pupil posts a video and issues the throwdown and others can respond in comments or in kind by posting their own video.

Even as I typed the above, I realised it doesn't even have to be limited to YouTube. It might be more sensible to use Flickr for an art throwdown or an ArtTrack throwdown. And I'd love to see Computing classes have a go at a Scratch throwdown.

What do you think? Anyone up for a throwdown?