As teachers, we are always looking to spice up our presentations or documents to capture the attention of the students, parents, or administrators who may be using them. As stated in the Education World article, Clip Art 101, "Visual images can illustrate concepts, clarify content, create and sustain interest, and increase understanding and memory. In addition, they just plain make you look good!"
One way to to get images that make your presentations stand out is to draw them yourself via a tool such as Microsoft Paint or Clarisworks. For those of you who are not as artistic, upload pictures of your student work with a digital camera, or a scanner. Take your camera out for a hike and get that perfect image to serve as a background for your geology presentation. There are many possibilities when working with your own digital camera.
If none of these appeal to you, clip art is a safe bet for gathering images for various presentations or documents. Most document software comes with clip art as a feature of the software, but there are also several free clip art sites you may visit to download other pictures. Something to be aware of: images on the internet are protected by copyright. So, no matter how applicable that Google image is for your presentation, it is copyrighted unless it came from one of the free clip art sites. If you are interested in someone else's picture, be sure to ask permission and always cite your source!
With Google images ruled out, I am sure that many of you are worried about where to get your images for your presentation. I had personally not looked to closely at clip art that came with my software because I thought it would be boring or useless. However, after reading this article, I took a closer look, and found that the clip art on my computer and the clip art on some of the free sites can easily be used to make a presentation feel fun and engaging.
If you would like to hear more tips about clip art, or need help searching for clip art read the article here: http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech015.shtml
Elizabeth - Clip Art is so simple yet overlooked! Its amazing how much it can improve a presentation or project. In my last student teaching placement, the teacher was responsible for teaching technology. At this school, the students were allowed on Google images and nothing came up that was not appropriate. They were able to make a personal word document using clip art to express themselves! They loved seeing all the options of picture and clip art is such a fun tool!
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