As a computer technology teacher, I am always looking for ways to integrate other areas of the curriculum into my own. One of the units I teach to my 8th grade classes is Graphic Design. Students use
Adobe Photoshop Elements to create many projects in my class. There are numerous ways to use a program like this in education. One way I did this was to have my students research idioms. I shared with them an
Idiom Website where they could find many different idioms and their meanings. Once they made their selection, the students opened Photoshop and began illustrating their idiom literally. They are learning about a key concept while also practicing their technology skills!!
Bubble.us is an awesome website. According to the site, the goal was to create a "simple to use and easy to learn tool to help people organize ideas in a way that makes sense to them." The cool part is that you can share your stuff with collaborators, save your projects online, change the colors and sizes of the bubbles, add/delete arrows, and move the buttons around on the page. This site was created in 2006 by two guys from Russia, Kirill and Levon. Educationally, teachers can have students use this site to organize their ideas or to visually depict concepts in reading and writing. Graphic organizers are a powerful way to communicate ideas visually. Here is a sample that I created using the site: 
