phone camera and image search

Some things I love about digital culture:

1. Phone cameras are great. I use my phone camera more for taking pictures than talking to people. I am considering an upgrade, not because I need it, but because I heard the camera is even better. This funny picture with caption sums it up.

2. Google image search. I use it for lots of different purposes. I sometimes pluck images from the Internet, but forget to note down where they came from. Google image search helps me find the source. If I am lucky, though not in this case. The image has been reposted way over 50 times, so that it would take some serious detective work to find the original. I wish Google had a function where you can list results by publication date.

poetry at play

It started with this interactive site for children wortwusel.net. I spent a long time exploring all the features, poetry, images and sounds to play with. I am not quite sure if it is appealing to most children, as the poetry is quite abstract, the navigation is not quite clear and the interactions are maybe too limited, but I certainly enjoyed it very much, some pages less, some more. For example here in the park are some illustrated poems by famous authors: I like the illustrations, you can play with them while listening to the poems read out loud. My favourite pages were these three, where you can create creatures in shades of blue, green and grey from a choice of background images and adding simple shapes for eyes and mouths, while some entertaining sound effects keep you going. It is suprisingly easy to use and I was quite pleased with the results, reminiscent of  the illustrations of picture book authors Eric Carle and Leo Lionni, which I love. Wortwusel certainly brought out the inner child in me!

These two guys came out quite spontaneously. After downloading them from the site I removed the white background and added a paper background, free stickers and a No.1 made with a free font. I like them so much that I gave myself three stars! So I guess it is truely a remix. You could call Wortwusel an  interactive picture book, and it is  one of the loveliest I came across so far.

found objects

I have learned some tricks from “I work with Pages” – things that I tried to figure out for ages! And so I have been playing around with some free digital resources, which I have collected over time. Well, I may be no great artist, but it is fun.