Big Huge Labs (Ideas for Classroom Use)

I know I have blogged about this site before, but as I was showing it to a teacher today, I was reminded why I love it so much!

Big Huge Labs is such a wonderful site for teachers and students.

Here are a few ideas on ways to use their site.

1. Cube-upload 6 images and you can make a cube (the size to fit in the palm of your hand) with lots of uses. For example, upload scenes from a book and have the students tell what is going on during that scene, why they liked or didn't like it, create a different ending than the picture shown, etc. Or, create jpegs asking questions for your cube such as "What is your favorite book and why?", "Where is your favorite vacation location and why?", etc. This can get small groups talking quickly just by rolling the cube!

2. Motivator Poster-create a motivational type poster by uploading your picture and adding text to it. These don't have to be the usual "TEAMWORK" type motivational poster....get creative and use it for other uses such as vocabulary words...upload a picture that shows the meaning of the word, then make the large word the vocabulary word and the tagline under it can be a sentence showing the correct use of the word. You could also upload a book cover a student has read, make the large word a word they choose to describe the book, then the tagline can be a sentence to describe why someone should read the book.

3. Magazine Cover-let your students get creative and create a magazine cover all about them! Or how about making one for their mom or dad for mother's or father's day? Simply upload a picture of the student with their parent and have the student create headlines about their parents. Another idea would be to upload a book cover as the picture and the headlines on the magazine cover can be persuading students to read that book.

4. Trading Card-create a "baseball" type card for students in your room. They can put a title, subtitle, and description of themselves for a beginning of the year "Get to know you" activity. Use it for a character in a book. Have the student illustrate the character and write a description of the character for the trading card. We have also used this for students to create a trading card on an assigned President. It could also be used to create trading cards for different locations throughout the world....post them around your room so students can learn about various places like a virtual field trip.

5. Captioner-don't have lots of money to spend on comic software? No worries! Just upload your picture and have students add thought or conversation bubbles to them easily with this feature.

Big Huge Labs has tons of choices for you to use with your photos. There is also an educator account which allows you to use the site without ads and allows students to sign in without an email address!

If you use this site with your students or to create things in your classroom, please leave a comment to share your great ideas with everyone!