Skitch it up!

Skitch has long been a favorite of mine from the Evernote suite of tools. A super-easy, cross-platform, free and powerful photo annotation tool, it was originally developed by the makers of Comic Life, and you'll see why this makes sense.

So much of language involves breaking a whole into its parts, labeling, or describing, and Skitch gives you an engaging and beautiful way to do this with students. Skitch allows you to build a diagram or graphic organizer from scratch (its tools include arrows, shapes, text, highlights or drawn lines) or apply all of these annotations to a snapped or saved photo.

Skitch also allows you to annotate a snap of a website or map, as I have done above, and recently added the ability to annotate PDFs, though this is a premium feature.

For another example, see how a client of mine (in his own way) analyzed a confusing-to-navigate Brugger's Bagel location using Sarah Ward's executive functioning concept of "zones" (as part of the Space/Time/Objects/People "STOP" strategy, and not to be confused with Leah Kuyper's equally awesome Zones of Regulation).

"Grabbage" being the self-serve area.

Skitch naturally integrates with Evernote to save your work, but you can use the app without an account and save to the Camera Roll, you just won't be able to edit it later.

Think of Skitch as a context for:

-Describing facial expressions on snapped pictures within a group or with role-play.

-Integrating with picture books and creating a diagram from concept-rich pages that you snapshot with the Camera.

-Saving and describing images related to the curriculum.

-Young and old...check out Kindergarten teacher Matt B. Gomez's post about how he uses Skitch with his youngsters.

What else? Share your ideas in the comments!

Posted with Blogsy