Monday, May 29, 2017

FotoJet - free online photo editing


FotoJet is an online site to edit photos and create collages.  As with many sites, there is a free and a paid version.  If you know me, you know that I'm all about free.  I played around with the free version and it is very easy to use.  It reminds me of some other online photo editing site, but it very simple and easy to use.  I like that I don't need to have an account to use the free version.  Edits that you are able to do with the quick version are quite varied.  There are options to add frames, overlays, clipart and text.  These simple options really allow you to spice up your pictures.  You can also add effects which remind me of Instagram filters.  Lastly, but certainly not the least important, are the basic edits.  You can crop, resize and rotate the picture as well as adjust the color and exposures.
When you are done you can save the picture as a png or jpg file.

When you are done editing your photo you can make a fun collage.  While FotoJet has a basic collage
template to merge two or more photos, it also has some fun options like putting your face on a wanted poster or on a pumpkin.  You can design photo cards as well and there was a number of templates to choose from.  There is also an option to design graphics that are presized to certain dimentions (such as a YouTube Header or an Instagram post).  This option reminds me of Canva.

There is so much on the site that I suggest that you check it out.  I could talk about it more, but this post is getting long. ;-)

  FotoJet was nice enough to provide me with access to their premium version so that I can try out those extra features.  The paid version is  and give you more options within each of the six editing categories (in addition to removing the ads).  Some of the extras that you can are more choices for clip art and some more of the basic editing features.  One of my favorite of those is the focus option where you can blur the background of a picture to mimic depth of field.  The other extras are more choices when it comes to collages and the design options.

If you are looking for a simple, but effective online photo editing program I suggest you try out FotoJet.

Monday, May 22, 2017

Top 5 Post of April

Once again I'm a little late with this, but below are the Top 5 Posts of April.  I hope that you enjoyed reading them and if you haven't now is a great time to give them a read. :-)
  1. StudyBlue Pro - give it a try!
  2. Separating and Combining Columns in Excel
  3. Socrative quick Questions
  4. Random Group Generator and Student Selector
  5. G Suite Google Apps Training Chrome Extension

Is there something that you are looking to learn how to do?  Leave me a comment below and I will work on a post and video to help you out! 






Thursday, May 18, 2017

A secure way to have students take tests and quizzes online

Microsoft has developed a super easy way to lock down students' computers so that they can also access the webpage that is hosting your online test. Students won't be able to use the clipboard, go to another website or apps, share their screen or print anything. All you need is the link to your online test (it doesn't have to be anything fancy; I use a form I created through Microsoft or Google) and a way to get the link out to the students. Students do need to be on a computer that is running Windows 10. I also recommend that they use the Edge browser as I haven't encountered any errors using it.

The link that you need to share with the students is ms-edu-secureassessment:<URL>!enforceLockdown where you would replace <URL> with the url to the quiz. You want to make sure that there are no spaces in the address. I would also recommend that you set the link to display as a word or phrase so that students don't just copy and paste the quiz url instead of the whole long url. If you are not sure how to do this, leave a comment with how you are sending out the link and I will make a tutorial for you! If you want more information on the Take a Test app, you can read about it here.

This post also appears on my science blog - Savvy Secondary Science