Web Tools

Tool Name	Features/ Strengths of Tool	Use/ Grade/ Project Possibilities/ Subject
Desktop: Adobe Photoshop	You can create shapes and colors or you can import already existing images. You have many options to edit those images. You can create layers, cut pieces of pictures out, and adjust color easily. You can sharpen an image, reduce blurring due to shaky camera, and enlarge pixely pictures to look like good quality. A positive is that the tools available are very well laid out. There are neat and simple tool bars for everything.	This software is definitely designed to be used with older students: high school, maybe middle school. I think the only thing I would use this software for would be a photography or graphics kind of elective class. None of the content areas I teach in elementary school would have a need for such advanced images. Enhancing photos taken in different ways would be a main project use for this software. I could also see it being used in a history class to re-create historical scenes. Students could find images of people and layer them together to show understanding of the historical event.
Webware: Picnik.com	A negative for this site is that there are many less features and options of what you can do with the images than you would find on a program like Adobe Photoshop. This can also be a positive, however. If you don’t need anything too complex, I think simpler tools are better to work with. You can crop, adjust colors, and fix red-eye. You can make the whole picture black and white or sepia, and lots of other options as well. You can also have the picture be black and white with one part colored. You can also add text.	This website is simpler and more basic. I think it would be appropriate for upper elementary students up through high school and college, depending on what they are doing. 4th graders could use this site to edit pictures they took on a field trip and then give a presentation of the information they learned there. High schoolers can edit pictures they have taken on a basic level. If it were a photography or more advanced graphics class I would recommend a more complex tool. Upper elementary students could take pictures of themselves and age them (make them slightly blurry or painting like and black and white with worn edges) and write a story about themselves from a different older time period. It could be my life during the civil war.