Get Creative

Have you always wanted to be on the front cover of a magazine?  Or maybe a movie poster was more your dream?  Or maybe you just want to have students create cool things to prove they have mastered a topic in your classroom?  If so, I found something you may be interested in!

I discovered a great - free - resource to create magazine covers, movie posters, mosaics or motivational posters (but wait...there's more!).  Honestly, this site has a lot to offer and it is all free!  The site is Big Huge Labs.  At first I thought this was just a "fun" little site...but then I started thinking about how it could be used in the classroom.  In history students can create movie posters about a time period or event.  In English they could create a magazine cover for the main character in a novel.  In science a mosaic of pictures from their lab would really show some creativity in their lab report.  And in math students could create motivational posters based on different rules like PEMDAS or reducing fractions.

As you can see - this site will  help students be creative...Yeah for Common Core!  The possibilities are endless really.  You all know what would work best in your classroom - I just thought I would share the site so that you can put your creativity to work!  And like most of us all know already...if  you put the tool  in the hands of the students they will do amazing things!

Here is a quick little practice magazine cover I created while practicing with the website:

One downside - there are a lot of ads on the site...they have to make money in some way.  You will need to teach students what are ads and what buttons they need to click to create their project.  But, there is a link at the top of the page for education where you can sign up for an educator's account so that you can:

• Pre-register your students so they can sign in without requiring an email address.
• View and download content created by your students.
• Use the site advertising-free. And we absolutely do not try to sell anything to your students.
• Ready to print ID cards for your students

Signing up for an educator's account is easy.  All you need to do is:

1. Create a free account or sign in. (Registering with your school email address isn't required but it does speed up the approval process.)
2. Return here to scan and upload proof of current educator status. This can be a scan of your official school identification or similar document.

Anyway, check it out and give it a try.  I created the sample above without adding my email or creating an account.  If you do end up using it - respond and tell me what you did and if the students enjoyed it!