Tips For Using PicCollage In The Classroom 

With more than 200M total downloads, PicCollage is the easiest and most fun way to document your photo memories. It is a photo, image and text-editing tool. It is a highly engaging platform for pupils to share their learning creatively and offer a basic introduction to photo editing and graphic designing.

Using PicCollage, you can create collages of multiple images (and video clips), but it can do much more! And it supports across the curriculum in different ways. The application works on various platforms: iPad, Android, Windows and Amazon devices.

For a quick and introduction, here’s a brief PicCollage promotional video demonstrating a few of the fantastic features:

In this article, we bring you some valuable tips on how to use PicCollage in the classroom.

As a teaching tool

As aforementioned, PicCollage is an easy-to-use app that demonstrates to students how to complete a worksheet or use it as a quick app to show whole class modelled writing. Airplay/screencast your device to the screen and you and type as the students suggest ideas to create an interactive lesson.

The app works fantastically when showing students how you want a particular activity completed or a writing activity structured/ set out.

About me adjective activity

As the name suggests, this activity is about making students learn adjectives while performing a playful activity. The adjective activity about me turns out to be effective in the practice/consolidation of students’ understanding of adjectives. Students take a picture of themselves or a person, location, animal or thing of their choice and write adjectives to describe it. Learners of any age can perform this activity to hone their knowledge of adjectives or vocabulary.  

Another way is to have students use verbs to describe how the person/place/animal/thing moves, what it does etc.

For writing

PicCollage is a fantastic tool to engage students in writing. PicCollage provides students with an alternate and creative way to share their thoughts, from reluctant writers to accomplished writers.

The application is an easy way to share students writing creatively and colourfully with their friends and families. It will also help develop their creativity skills.For instance, give your students any theme based on any festival, experiments, tour etc. and collect pictures of the same, insert them into PicCollage, decorate them using vibrant or beautiful background, edit font and its colour, insert images, add stickers and illustrations, efficiently and then write about them.

As a replacement for worksheets

Most teachers often don’t like using worksheets now and then, as it is very time-consuming. They prefer finding ways to make them digital. This not only saves preparation time in printing but also saves the use of paper. And, introducing technology in class get students automatically more intrigued and engaged than if handed a worksheet.

To do this with PicCollage, either Airplay the worksheet onto the TV or take one or two prints out and ask your students to take a photo of the sheet. Then, using the text feature, complete the sheet. This also allows students to share their work through Seesaw or email quickly.

Guess my number activity

You can incorporate this fun activity completed at the end of a lesson by dividing students into smaller groups. Make a Pic collage with missing numbers. This activity can also be differentiated depending on the individual needs of the pupils or age groups by changing the value of the numbers used or adding additional tasks that students should include. Furthermore, you can create QR codes using any app or website to reveal the correct answer.

Lifecycles activity

The lifecycle activity is an excellent way for students to demonstrate their understanding of lifecycles at the end of a lesson. For instance, you’re your students use web images and text features to create the lifecycle of a plant or frog and make collages using PicCollages and share with friends and families through Seesaw.

Near doubles activity

We can also use the PicCollage application to demonstrate students understanding of mathematical concepts. With this activity, students can show their knowledge of near doubles by simply breaking down the number into doubles, then adding them, followed by adding the leftover number to get the answer.

Measurement activity

A simple and quick way to record students works so that they are accountable for completing a certain amount of measurements and share their understanding with their parents. Teachers can also keep activities like this done on PicCollage as a form of assessment. This activity uses the camera and text feature in PicCollage.

For photography

Have your students click photographs of whatever they like, their pet playing, picturesque beauty, leaves falling from trees etc. Once they were happy with the pictures they had taken, instruct editing their photos using any filter and post that, ask to open PicCollage, set their shot as the background, give a title to their work, and decorate the pictures in the application. It is undoubtedly a great combination of outdoor learning and technology!

For introduction

Students can also use PicCollage to give their introduction. They can create a collage of what they like to do for fun or their favourite things about school, their name, age, and class to use as their visual introduction to their new classmates in the new academic year.

Making cards

While students are on holiday or any festival is approaching, they can create greeting cards on PicCollage and send them digitally to their classmates.

Assignments

For a class assignment, have your students prepare book covers for the books they have read. In the same vein, ask them to create collages about their favourite parts of the books they have read. Students who have difficulty starting a descriptive writing assignment could benefit from creating a photo collage on the event or concept on which they are writing. Thinking about the images they choose, they also think about what they will say about each photo.

Here’s a quick step by step guide on how PicCollage works.

1. Download PicCollage and install it.
2. Run the app and choose the layout according to your choice from a list of seven different layouts.
3. The next step is to add photos to your collage. In this step, you’ll see a list on the left side. Add images to this list. Pick these photos by using your finger and drop them on the photo frame. You can also click on the “fill at random” button, and your photos will automatically be added to the frame.
4. Customize the photos as you want. You can add, remove, rotate, zoom in, zoom out, and drag images. You can also fill your collage background, add text to your photos, and adjust your collage’s space, margin, border, corner, and photo number. If you want to apply shadow, you can also do it here.
5. The last step is to export your photos. First, choose the size of the page and then save it as an image format that you want. You can save it as PEG, TIFF or PNG.

Video Tutorial

To learn more, click here.

About the Author

Author: Saniya Khan

I am Saniya Khan, Copy-Editor at EdTechReview – India’s leading edtech media. As a part of the group, my aim is to spread awareness on the growing edtech market by guiding all educational stakeholders on latest and quality news, information and resources. A voraciously curious writer with a dedication to excellence creates interesting yet informational pieces, playing with words since 2016.

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