I would like to suggest visiting some very cool planets that gravitates in a virtual galaxy not so far away. It is called Tag Galaxy. It is lots of fun and very simple to use. Tag Galaxy is an image search application that works with Flickr and it is created using papervision3D (PV3D), those a little more tech curious can find more about papervision3D here.
The application starts to work when an initial tag word is entered in the text field provided, it could be a word like flower or a concept like happy. At that point, planets will start to animate and appear on the screen carrying other related tag words. A collection of tag words can be chosen by selecting the planets. Click on the window hold and drag and the planets will rotate around. Click on the main planet in the center of the universe to see all photos related to your collection populate like a beautiful mosaic of colorful images. The tag words are collected on the bottom left hand corner of the screen. A full screen mode is also provided.
There are unlimited uses for this tool in the classroom, on a Smart Board projector use it with the kindergarten class to show them simple images like flower, summer, and winter. Show older students what it means to be from a certain culture. Of course, like with many internet tools, teachers need to be careful by pre-selecting words that would bring only safe images and for the older student, to address appropriateness of content. Other than that, this tool is visually rich and interactive, truly an eye candy. Of course this same search can be done by using Fliker but doing troughTag Galaxy is a whole lot much more fun!
No comments:
Post a Comment