A picture paints a thousand words is a saying I have often heard. A lot of the blog posts I have read in the Teacher Challenge about effective posts have all stated that pictures in posts can be very beneficial. They break up block of text and provide extra explanation.

I needed to use pictures in my post about creating a custom header. When I started the post I thought about what software to use for this. I even opened GIMP ready to use. I made my first screen capture using Printscreen and then paused. I have had GIMP loaded on my machine for a while but have not really used it…….. I do not have unlimited time to make my pictures…… Is there a different way……a way I might be more comfortable with?

I remembered one of the IT technicians, who help me at work, creating an image for a teaching colleague using MS Publisher which is a program usually associated with words not images. He used the SAVE AS function to change the file format to JPEG and bingo he had a picture file instead. I then realised that the same thing could be done in MS Powerpoint. I am familiar with this software, I know where to find things quickly and I can save the individual slides as images but keep all the different images in the one slide show. Perfect, at least for me.

One day I will learn more about GIMP but for now using Powerpoint was quicker for me. I could also have used MS Paint but even in that I would be slower as I stumbled around the few menus to find what I needed. I could even have used ArtRage – the software I was writing about but it is an art program at heart and I needed a layout and explanation program.

This relates well to one of the things I feel very strongly about as a teacher. We need to give our students the skills to be able to think

• this is what I want to do
• what computer program or online tool or book or materials do I know/have that will help me to achieve this

If a new online tool or piece of software looks different we should be teaching our students the skills of finding out where things are. This might be a simple as thinking “There must be a way to save my work. Where is it?”

How do you approach a new online tool or piece of software?

What skills do you want your students to have when approaching a new online tool or piece of software?