Friday, February 27, 2015

Signs of Hope and a New Source of Photos for Assignments

By this time of year, I think we all start feeling like winter has lasted long enough. The days are getting a bit longer, and the sun is coming up a bit earlier now, but it's still cold and snowy, and spring a long way off. 

Rodent hanging from tree branch
More than a month ago now, I was walking along the Munger Trail and came across a dead rodent caught in the fork of some branches. I encounter a lot of dead rodents on the trail, and I often take pictures of them, much to the chagrin of my Facebook friends, who come upon such photos in their feed. (I know Ms Oswald finds it strange!) I figure that most of these rodents are killed by cats. This one, though, might have been stashed here by an owl or a shrike, as a snack for later.

Caught in the grips of winter--yep--that's where we've been hanging for a while. Nevertheless, there are signs of hope. I was walking down the front hallway only yesterday and saw the Greens Club's "portable garden," and the sight of it made me happy. I stopped to take a picture. As I did so, Mrs Tri from the Library walked by and said something about this being a little sign of hope. I agreed.  
The Portable Garden, catching some rays



We could all use a little hope these days, a sense that things will get better and brighter. And greener! I have to say my mind is turning toward wildflowers. 

Found this lovely photo on photosforclass.com.
Note the pre-made credit-caption.
Whenever I test out a new web tool for adding digital images to blogs, presentations, and infographics, etc, I always search for Lady Slippers, to see what images come up. I was playing around with photosforclass the other day. (I had read about it here.) It offers a search-box widget for blog sidebars, and I put it in the sidebar of my blog. 

This tool is pretty good: the images are safety-filtered, and they include a proper caption with image credits. The only problem is that the links in the image credits are not live. Still, using a tool like this is always better than nothing! We should never be using images without giving credit. I've written more about this topic, and about using other image tools (like my favorite: Foter.com) here.

(The trick to using photosforclass is that you have to click the "download" button and then right-click the image and "save to downloads." Then you upload the image to your blog like any other.)

4 comments:

  1. I love the amount of contrast the squirrel (R.I.P. buddy) picture and the Portable Garden picture have! Thanks for the great picture of the garden by the way! I didn't realize how warm and hopeful the Portable Garden looked. I'm glad the Greens club was able to give that to the school.

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    1. Glad you liked the contrast! That's theeffect I was going for. It was fun to see you working on the garden later that day.

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  2. If this thank you comment shows up multiple times at some point, it's because I keep getting error messages from Google+
    Thank you for the information and links for photo creds!

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    1. Has only shown up once. Hope the info is helpful to your students. That infographic assignment looked cool!

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