Jurassic Paint - Dinosaurs at school!

The cinematic release of Jurassic World captured the imagination of children up and down the country and it was great to see it being incorporated into the classroom. @ICT_MrP wrote about some brilliant ideas for using Jurassic World (such as http://mrparkinsonict.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/exploring-jurassic-world.html?m=1 

http://mrparkinsonict.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/jurassic-school.html?m=1 

 http://mrparkinsonict.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/exploring-our-own-jurassic-world.html?m=1etc) 

With the DVD release of the film I thought it would be good to again use dinosaurs to engage children.  The app Jurassic Paint (see what they did there?!) allows you to take/use photos and add pictures of dinosaurs. It sounds very simple and it is. 

Simply add your image and then scroll through the various dinosaurs before adding them to your image where you can adjust the size, orientation etc. 

Children will be able to create their images very quickly which will then give them more time to focus on their writing, using their picture as inspiration. 

One of the (very slightly) more advanced features I like is the eraser and drawing tools.  Once you've added your dinosaur you can erase parts of it so that it appears to hide behind a tree or be submerged in water. It's easy to do but also very effective.  See below. 

And in water.

You can also use the drawing tool to add ripple effects, reflections or shadows.  Obviously this is a bit trickier to do but the colour copy and opacity tool makes it easier than you might think. 

For me this app is obviously not as spectacular as using a green screen app and filming dinosaurs on the playground etc, but it's a quick, free alternative that won't take up too much time. In 5 minutes the children could already have their image, or a storyboard of images and be ready to write their story.  It's a simple app that does exactly what it says on the tin, which is why I like it.

Thanks

Tom

@teach_fresh