Topic 16: Big Huge Labs

I love searching the Internet to find fun resources that I can use in my classroom. I actually came across Big Huge Labs a while ago but forgot about it in the craziness of the new school year. Big Huge Labs is a free website where you can create fun and interesting things out of your digital pictures. You do not have to register to use many of the features however if you do create an account you can save your projects to the site. Also, if you have a facebook account you can easily register through that login information.

I have played around with the site with some of my personal pictures and it is addicting. I took some time out today to think of numerous ways that I could incorporate the features offered on this website into classroom lessons:

Motivator: You can use pictures taken of your class during the year to create motivational posters for the students to read. Another great idea is to have students create a poster with a character from a story they have read. They would need to analyze the traits of the character to create a descriptive poster of that characters personality.

Photobooth: Students can work on sequencing events with this feature. They need to put pictures in the order that they occurred. It would work really well with timelines in history or steps of the scientific process.

Magazine Cover/Movie Poster: The first idea that came to me would be to create a fun book review. The students would need to identify the story elements, such as main characters and plot, and then translate that into the project.

Badge Maker: Create badges for important accomplishments. We are currently working on memorizing our multiplication facts and the students would be very excited to get a 'Multiplication Master' license. I created an example using my dog but imagine how excited students would be to have this laminated with their own picture on it. *TIP: In order to avoid the hassle of permission forms and student pictures, have your kids create their own Mii (a cartoon image of themselves) at http://www.makewee.com/.

Calendars, CD covers, Billboards, and so much more! The possibilities are endless for the ways that you can use these in the classroom. Explore, Play...Enjoy!