Sat 3 Apr 2010

Free PowerPoint templates

I just came across this website while searching for free PowerPoint templates. The site has hundreds of PowerPoint templates in many different categories including art, education, technology and business. Templates can also be searched for by tags, by doing a keyword search and even by color.

I found many of the templates to be of high quality and they included a wide variety of styles and designs from cute to casual to sophisticated. While not intended for printing, I believe many of them would also work well as backgrounds for posters printed on A4 or 8” x 11” sheets of paper.
Better yet, just like poster-street.com, there was no registration required to download the PowerPoint templates. You simply have to click on the ‘download’ link under each template (the site is rather ad-heavy, so be sure to click on the right button) and then save the zip file to your computer. Once you unzip or extract the file, you’ll see a folder similar to the screenshot below that contains all the graphics. Be sure to click on the file that ends with the .ppt extension.

Caution: I noticed the use of images of popular movie and game characters. I cannot vouch for how kosher this is and whether the templates follow special licensing agreements. Personally, I would stay away from using anything with Mickey Mouse or Mario just to be safe!

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Fri 2 Apr 2010

Free clip art from the open clip-art library!

If you’re looking for free clip-art to include in a poster, newsletter of flyer, look no further – the Open Clip-art Library is here! Thanks to a blog post on Open Clip-Art Library relaunch I came across this comprehensive site that claims to have 26,648 images. The Open Clip-art Library project aims to create an archive of clip art that can be used freely for any type of use.

To put it to a test, I tried several searches – some were more successful than others.

My search for the words “world” brought up couple of images of planet earth, “girl” pulled up some very cute clip-art of cartoon-like characters,  “reading” led to two pages of images that seemed somewhat related and “math” brought up two more pages with a few related but many unrelated images.

I had a hard time understanding how a search for the word “book” brought up over 11 pages of images that included pictures of a tree, a whale, glasses and a space  shuttle. On the other hand, the search for the word “strawberry” pulled up one page of clip-art that seemed quite accurate (see screenshot below).

Regardless of the somewhat dubious keywords used to tag some of the images, I still think this can be a good resource if you’re looking to save some money and lack the skills to draw your own custom art.

The clip-art would be ideal for creating free posters, cards, flyers and newsletters for your school or charity event.  If you’re artistically talented you can even upload your own clip-art to the website. Keep in mind that all graphics submitted to the Open Clip-art Library will be placed into the Public Domain according to the statement by the Creative Commons.

Do you know of any other free clip-art websites? Share them here.

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Thu 1 Apr 2010

More free poster ideas using online chart tools

Graphs make great posters! Check out some of these free online graphing tools and create your own posters with information from your classroom (or office!)

Collect data from your students about their likes, background and/or hobbies and make a beautiful visual display that will also help them remember the different graph types. Create bar graphs, pie charts, line graphs, histograms, scatter plots, box plots and even stem and leaf displays. For early elementary students you can even use clip-art to create pictographs.

Here are a few online tools to get you started.

1. NCES Create-a-graph

2. ChartGo

3. Online Chart Tool

4. Pie Color

5. Hohli Online Charts Builder

Kid-friendly warning: While the Create-a-graph tool is from the National Center for Education Statistics and is targeted at students, the others are aimed at businesses and a couple of these tools are ad-supported.

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Wed 31 Mar 2010

Free posters using Wordle

Wordle , if you haven’t heard of it already, is a great free online tool that takes a piece of text and then creates a beautiful tag cloud out of the most used words. This can be extremely useful if you’re looking at analyzing a speech, a poem or even a student essay to explore which themes and topics are most prominent. It also can help you create some great decorations for your classroom wall!

Here’s how you can do it:

1. To start, go to wordle.net and click on the link that says ‘Create your own’ on the home page.

2. Type in or copy and paste a piece of text. This can be anything from information about your students (favorite things, places they’ve visited, countries they’re from) to a poem by Robert Frost or a speech like the Gettysburg address. Click Go.

3. Wait a few seconds (the java applet can sometimes take a little long to load) and then text, watch as Wordle creates beautiful displays of the most frequently used words. You can keep clicking Randomize to see different styles.

4. Once you see one you like, just click print – it’s that easy! If you’d really like to do something extraordinary, try creating many different “wordless” and then stick them on a colored poster board or a long sheet of butcher paper.

Here’s one that I created out of the Jabberwocky, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872 by Lewis Carroll.

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Wed 31 Mar 2010

Reading comprehension posters using free mind mapping software

Graphic organizers are a useful strategy when teaching students to brainstorm, organize or analyze information. Many teachers are combining the technique of mind mapping or concept mapping with the use of interactive whiteboards to create lessons that are both interactive and engaging. Mind maps can also be a great way to create quick educational posters that will help reinforce certain strategies for your students.

Here’s a sample poster that we created using Gliffy.com – a free online diagramming tool.

You can also use PowerPoint to do this, even though it might be a little harder to keep branches and circles together. There are also commercially available software that many schools have access to.  But if you don’t have Inspiration or Kidspiration in your classroom, there’s no need to despair. Check out this list of free online diagramming tools. Now that will get the job done.

Story-map

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Mon 22 Mar 2010

5 Inspiring quotes for teachers

Teachers everywhere go to work every day and literally shape our future. Here are five quotes to remind teachers how important their work is, especially on those days when they feel it is not. Got a friend who’s a teacher? Use these quotes to create a quick card, bookmark or an inspirational poster. They are also perfect for placing on pages of a scrapbook.

1. I touch the future. I teach.  – Christa McAuliffe

2. What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches. – Karl Menninger

3. Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them become what they are capable of becoming.  – Goethe

4. Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.  – William Butler Yeats

5. A hundred years from now, it will not matter what kind of car I drove, what kind of house I lived in, how much money I had in the bank…but the world may be a better place because I made a difference in the life of a child.  – Forest Witchcraft

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Mon 22 Mar 2010

Free posters for your classroom

Creating an inspirational learning environment in a classroom can be both a fun and frustrating experience for educators. One way to quickly and inexpensively do this is to put up thought-provoking wall art. Here are three ways to decorate your wall space without breaking the bank.

1.  Take a trip to the dollar store – surprisingly, dollar stores can be a great place to find educational posters for your classroom. Often you’ll find posters related to reading and learning basic math facts.

If you teach middle or high school, you can sometimes find posters that include beautiful photographs of nature. Print out an inspiring quote on paper and glue it to the poster to create your own semi-home made motivational poster!

2. Browse through old magazines – another great place to look for wall art is in old magazines. If you’re creative you can even design a collage with images and phrases or even tear out some of the more creative ads that include only text and place them in inexpensive frames. Some magazines like GOOD actually provides free posters with beautiful infographics that would make perfect wall art for a middle or highschool classroom.

3. Look Online – with a little bit of effort you can find some websites that offer free downloadable posters. If you feel adventurous you can even try downloading some free vector graphics or clip art to create your own. Upload the poster to your local print store and then pick it up within 24 hours. Sites like cafepress.com and etsy.com also offer posters that are hard to find and of very high quality.

Got any other ideas for beautiful wall art for your classroom? Share them here.

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