Digital Art and Photography For the Classroom

Having grown up as the daughter of a talented artist I have had ample opportunity to view and appreciate art throughout my life. Naturally, I have my favorite mediums and style, as influenced by my father's own art. With that said, I have also become a fan of digital art created on iPads. 

There are oodles of photo editing and art creation apps which can lend an artistic flair to student projects. The apps I am going to highlight here are but a few available for use on iPads. I started getting creative with geometric designs as I was working on an iTunes U geometry course for my fourth graders. 

The first geometric design was created using Sketchbook Express. This free app is easy to learn and allowed me to create images quickly. Once I finished the image I saved it in my photo library. From my photo library I was able to access the image using the next three apps. 

The second image above was created using the app Percolator. I imported the original image to Percolator and then had fun playing with the different adjustments until I had something I liked. I have used Percolator with student portraits and this has led to some fun 'Guess who this is?' displays. 

For the third image I used Word Foto. This app has many educational uses. Again using the original image from my photo library I was prompted to add words. The app then randomly filled the image with my text. There are various styles and fine tuning adjustment available once the words are placed. After making my final adjustments I saved the Word Foto image to my photo library. I could also share my new image using either an email or Facebook upload. In the classroom this app could be used to highlight key concepts or vocabulary for any image a student wanted to use. There is tremendous potential here.

In the fourth image I used the free photo app Snapseed. This app tends to bring out the more artistic side of the user with multiple filters, frames and fine tuning of images. Again the user has multiple options for sharing the image, including the iPad's photo library.

With these four easy to use apps, there are so many creative options for teachers and students to explore and create images, which will enhance lessons and projects. It is well worth adding these to your app wish list. 

Created with WordFoto for a biography project.

Created with Percolator for a nonfiction project.