Thing #9

Wow!  Image generators, I think maybe I am too old for this, haha!  I had a seriously hard time coming up with something witty or catchy to say on these generators.  It was almost a stressful assignment.  I did finally come up with these few creations, Although not altogether creative still cute!

I do see where things like this could liven up a classroom and make things more interesting but I think they would have to be used very carefully.  At what point do decorations become too much.  At the risk of being flogged, I think sometimes teachers spend too much time making their classrooms visually appealing and not enough time making their lessons audibly appealing.  I would rather take the time and create lessons that kids will want to listen to than have walls they want to look at.   I know this probably won't be a popular opinion but as a parent I would rather walk into a sparsely decorated well organized room where a teacher holds the attention of the kids than one that is perfectly color coordinated and almost visually distracting.  From experience I can say there are times when a child will learn nothing from a teacher because there are too many distractions on the walls.  In some cases, such as a special education classroom there may be children with sensory integration issues where a room with too many colors and shapes could potentially cause overload.  

Okay, on with the assignment.  I chose to use Image Chef.  http://www.imagechef.com/  There are many different things you can create on this site: Word mosaics, poetry blender, photo frames.   The first I will share is a word mosaic.  I thought this turned out kind of cool!  I typed in Love to Learn but it looks like it could say Learn to Love as well.  It was as simple as typing in the words and clicking create.  This could potentially be used on a Valentine's day class newsletter or along with a Valentine theme in general.  

The next one I created was this Alphabet soup.  It was also as easy as typing the words and clicking create.  I was thinking you could use this image at a spelling station or a reading station but looking at it now, it's a little creepy...Eat some words?  What was I thinking.  Oh well, if you could think of a better phrase this would be cute.  Can't win 'em all.