TinEye – image search engine

TinEye is a reverse image search engine. It allows you to upload an image from your computer and search the Internet for it.

You can also paste a image URL and find other places that the image exist on the Internet.

The interesting thing about this tool is that you don’t have to remember, or have, the same file name. It not only searches the Internet for exact copies of the image but also any derivations of the image in question even if the image has been resized, cropped and manipulated with Photoshop or any other such tool. The stated goal of TinEye is to find all of sites/pages that use some form of the original image. When I first looked at this tool back in 2008 it was in beta format and it had a much smaller numer of images to search from.

TinEye works by using Image Identification Technology, not keywords, metadata, and watermarks. The site currently has an amazing number of images indexed.

It is very easy to use. You upload you image or put in the URL and within a few moments the results come up.

 

A few ideas about how it might be used in schools include:

1. Using it to check on students using images in a presentation but did not cite the source or as an aid to finding it again so they can cite the source.
2. Alternatively students or teachers could use it to find better quality (higher resolution) images of their required object. 
3. It could also help with anyone (students) creating and publishing websites to ensure that they do not use copyrighted photos or images or images without permission.
4. In Business Management: You could begin a search about a product or brand by starting with a photo and then finding sites that contain that image to get further information about it. Or making sure that an idea you have for a product has not been used before.
5. In Language studies: Another use may be in studing a language such as Chinese where it is character based. Taking a photo of the character and loading it in to TinEye may help you fnd the translation more quickly than the traditional dictionary. All the students would need is a camera in their phone and nowadays what phone does not have this!
6. History: Tracing information about some historical cartoons. I looked up a number of propaganda cartoons for the Russian and French revolutions and managed to trace quite a lot of information about them

There is now an official TinEye extension for Chrome that works on Windows and Linux.

Book Week 2010

We tried to do things differently this year. We finally have a large screen for showing digital images, videos, etc. and we bought some digital photo frames. This allowed us to change the emphasis to digital formats.

Book Trailer Competition: Our library technician Dawn created a great competition by gathering together 21 book/film trailers and putting them into a single film using Corel Video Studio. She spent a good deal of time putting in text (and editing the trailers slightly when the titles were a bit too prominent). Our students had to fill out the title of the film, the title of the book, linked to it the author of the book and then put down what section of the library you would find it (fiction, Non Fiction, picture book, graphic novel. The video file was playing everyday before school and at recess with sound and with the mute button on during class times. Some of the seniors were very taken with the idea and worked on the clips in one of their private study sessions.

Library Treasure Hunt: Another of our staff, Karen Kearney, created a quiz that had the students using their research skills as well as their observation skills. This was a great way for all the year seven students to put into practice the different searching. As part of the personal development classes they were given the chance to take part. They could answer many questions with the appropriate use of the catalogue and information pages linked to the library website. We also had them come up to the library to answer the rest of the questions. The quiz could be done at any time during the week and some of the older boys were very confident they would do well.

Picture puzzles: We created more picture puzzles using the Mosaic maker from Big Huge Labs. Each of the 7 mosaics referred to books at WFC with “bridge”in the title. There was some fun when finding pictures that gave clues to the books. All the clues were designed to link to keywords the notes and/or  subjects linked to the books when you looked up the catalogue. The images were saved onto memory sticks (each with a mosaic number image before it) and then shown using the digital photo frames.

Make your own animation
Building a bridge: This activity was held over Wednesday lunchtime. A small but dedicated group of boys undertook to build a bridge using paper, rubber bands, paper clips, straws and string. The bridges had to span 20cms and we tested how much weight they could hold by putting books on them. We had some very interesting attempts at bridges. Some were remarkably strong and held a lot of weight and others just looked interesting.

 

 The Literary Heads competition: On Friday some of the teaching staff helped us out by being the guinea pigs and wearing the names of various literary characters. They took it all in good spirit and the students loved the incongruity between the staff members and their character label. Our students really got into the spirit and a few had favourites, who they tried to help out . It was a lot of fun and the laughs were great to hear. All the students were sorry when the bell rang for period 4

 

Make your own animation

During lunch times we showed some short television programs. Loosely based around the idea of using media to bridge the gap between our students and literature the viewings included some of the 1960’s Batman episodes (we have quite a few Batman graphic novels and books of the later Batman films). We also had the  first episode of Black Books, the dictionary burning episode of Black Adder, and future screenings will include the original as well as more current Dr Who episodes, some other cartoons and some adaptations of children’s books. Requests have included Round the Twist and Lockie Leonard. Of curse the seniors have asked to see more of Black Adder and the Batman series. We plan to show more book trailers, author sites, and slides of new book covers as well as student work.

As always the boys will have an afternoon tea and be presented with certificates, by the principal, for doing well. They all will be able to choose books as prizes and we will make up book plates to celebrate their achievement. Many more than just the “winners” (those who joined in) will also attend and all will be able to ask their parents to come as well as it is held after school.

Useful sites (weekly)

• Empressr – The Best Online Rich Media Presentation Application Empressr is a rich media presentation tool where you can tell your story anyway you like. Add photos, music, video, and audio, and share it publicly or privately. Post a link or embed your presentation. Empressr also has great charting and table tools. 

• 5 Fantastic Ways to Use Wallwisher in the Classroom – SimpleK12 

• Bloom Taxonomy Book Review Questions  This is a good list of example questions for each level of Bloom’s (not the revised version) that could be used in a book review activity.

• About the series | A 21st Century Education Film Series  The twelve first-person films that make up this series explore three related themes, each in its own way at the center of current debate about what works, and what’s needed, to help students succeed during school and in life.

• Widgets for Teachers, Educators and Students – Edutweets widget  A widget that aggregates a bunch of different twitter conversations that teachers are having on twitter. It’s a great way to display what your PLN is saying right from your blog. 

• Free Social Studies worksheets, Games and Projects This site contains free U.S. history games, Ancient civilisation quizzes, U.S. history quizzes, geography games and quizzes, and free social studies worksheets.

• Family History Education – My Place In History – MyPlaceInHistory.com A website that teaches children about family history and has family trees for people like Don Bradman and Albert Einstein. Free site that requires registration – this isn’t too difficult. It states that it is for Year 5 and 6 but could be used by other year levels. Units of work and other resources are included.

• Teaching With Infographics | Social Studies, History, Economics – NYTimes.com Interactive Maps (Infographics) for Social Studies, History, Economics

• Romanov Family Albums – a set on Flickr  romanov, family albums, Russian history, dynasty, 1915

• iPads in Education  This site is “concerned with using Apple’s iPad for teaching and learning. Although this is based in the UK, the site’s content will reflect practice from other counties and contexts in order to explore and learn from a wide field.” Of particular interest is the iPad vs netbooks page

• iPad4Edu  A place to ask questions about using the iPad in education.

• YouTube – TheScholasticChannel’s Channel Scholastic’s website. Support for book reviews, author information etc.

• Confessions of an Aca/Fan: Archives: How New Media is Transforming Storytelling: A New Video Series Recently posted on Vimeo a fascinating series of short videos on the future of storytelling. The videos juxtapose the perspectives of some key thinkers in this space, including Clay Shirkey (NYU), Joshua Green (UCSB), Ian Condry and Nick Montfort (MIT), Dean Jansen from the Participatory Culture Foundation, Joe Lambert from the Center for Digital Storytelling, and, hmm, Henry Jenkins (USC), among others. Each video is between five and ten minutes long and tackles some of the ways that shifts in the media environment are changing the nature of stories and storytelling.

• Make a Free Website or Blog | Lifeyo A free website and blog platform that is an easy-to-use platform for the first time user. Recently, Lifeyo has added a couple of features to make their platform even better. The new feature of most interest to educators is the addition of a multiple author capacity. Now you can add contributing editors to your website. You can add editors by selecting “add editors” from the “share” menu then typing in the email addresses of your new editors. The other new feature recently added is the addition of customizable fonts and design elements.

• iSearchNotes.com – Search Student Notes This tool is a free service designed for college students to record and share notes in a searchable database. Students can take their notes directly in iSearchNotes using the integrated word processing platform. Notes can be tagged by subject area, course title, and or the course instructor’s name.

• Chatterous – group chat using the web, IM, email or phone  This is a free platform for creating your own private or public chat rooms. Many other services also allow you to create your chat rooms. What makes Chatterous different is that you can join Chatterous rooms via cell phone, IM (Google Talk), or email. Should you decide to make your chat room public, Chatterous rooms can be embedded into your blog or website. My sample Chatterous chat room is embedded below.

• Don’t Believe the Type Think Before You Post — Sharing Personal Information Online. How to stay safe online and what to report. Information about knowing and understanding the dangers of sharing and posting online with good PSA’s

• Paper Rater: Free Online Grammar Checker, Proofreader, and More  Paper Rater is a free service designed to help high school and college students improve their writing. Paper Rater does basic spelling and grammar checks, but the real value of Paper Rater is that it tells students if their papers have elements of plagiarism. Paper Rater scans students’ papers then gives students an estimate of the likelihood that someone might think that their papers were plagiarized.

• DOC Cop = Accurate + Fast + Free + Simple + Plagiarism Detection  Thos tool offers a free service for checking small documents and a free service for checking documents against each other. Doc Cop also offers a fee based service that will check large documents and do a more comprehensive check than that offered for free. 

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.