Picresize - Modifying Images with ease

By Dr. Anthony Vipin

Financial Disclaimer:
The Author has no financial interests in the products mentioned in this article.

Images need to be resized to suit the needs of the screen or uploading them onto the Internet. We work with images on a daily basis for power point presentations, articles, journal publications. Not all the available image viewers allow us to conveniently do that. However, there are a host of online editors that can do just that for free. I have decided to profile one such service called PICRESIZE and there are others as well like resizepic.com, webresize.com, resize2mail.com, fixpicture.org and many more.

PicResize.com was launched in March 2005 and has become one of the oldest and most popular image editing tools on the Internet. Today, the free service has processed millions of pictures with more than 30,000 photos resized daily. PicResize.com is an easy-to-use web site that allows you to resize and edit your photos directly online. It is completely free to use. You can upload BMP, GIF, JPG/JPEG, and PNG formatted image files. Your picture file can be up to 100 MB (megabytes). The resized picture is automatically deleted from their servers in 20 minutes after resizing the picture. PicResize.com does not store the original or resized pictures after the 20 minutes. However, the only exception is if you decide to use the 'Save to Web' feature in which your resized picture will be naturally saved to their servers (as you've intended).

Steps to Edit or Resize a Picture

1. To edit a picture on your computer, you will need to select the picture file from your computer (or from your camera attached to your computer) and upload it to PicResize.com. There are 2 options, Uploading from the Computer (mention the path) or the Web (use a URL Link). You can do this by starting on the home page and clicking the ‘Browse’ button.

2. There are other options as well for Quick Resize, Multiple Picture Upload that helps you resize your pictures through the Batch Resize, however the special effects are disabled in this feature.

 

 

3. Once the picture is uploaded, you are directed to the editing screen that helps you do a variety of functions like Crop, Resize, Rotate, Special Effects and also choose the format of the final file that needs to be edited.

 

4. The RESIZE YOUR PICTURE functions allows you to automatically pick a percentage like 25%, 50% and 75% or you can choose a custom size. Also, the final dimensions of the edited picture are also displayed on the side for information.

 

5. The CHOOSE SPECIAL EFFECT feature enables you to add in different effects to the uploaded Image. There are all listed and placing the mouse over them generates a preview as well to decide the desired effect to be applied. This is a very convenient step as all the required actions can be viewed in a single screen shot. 

 

 6. The SAVE AS function allows you to pick the format of the picture like JPG, GIF, PNG and BMP. It also has an option of quality such as Good, Better, Best. Also, the maximum file size can also be mentioned and is an optional function. Once done, you can click on the Resize my Picture button to process the file for the final output. 

7. The final output is available in four different options –

- View Image – You can preview your Image and then decide if you need to download it.

- Resume Edit – Takes you back to the editing page for further changes if any.

- Save to Disk – Allows you to download the Picture onto the computer.

- Save to Web – Can share with any of the social networks and also provides a direct link.

There is also an alert of AUTO CLEANUP that shows that the file is being stored for a period of 20 minutes and will be deleted after from the server.

Picresize packs a punch! An Online Freeware tool that gives you amazing options to modify and edit your Image on the go! Added an example of a file I resized with the tool with Special Effects of Spread.

Homepage
www.picresize.com

FAQs
http://www.picresize.com/help.php

PowerPoint slideshow in a window

By Dr. Eduardo Mayorga

Last month we posted on how to use "Socrative" to make your lectures interactive. But how can you get to show, simultaneously, in the same screen a PowerPoint slideshow and the response screen? You may think: "Impossible, the PowerPoint slideshow  launches full screen and you cannot share the screen". Well, you are half right. PowerPoint  by default, launches full screen but there is a way to change this and share your screen as we show in the image below.

To run a PowerPoint slide show in a window you must go to the "Slide Show" tab, click on it, then click on "Set up show". A window will popup, click on "Show in a window".

Resize the window as shown above and fit "Socrative"´s window by its side.

By the way, a blue whale can reach up to weigh 150 tons.

Increase Interactivity in the Classroom with Socrative

By Dr. Gabriela Palis

Socrative is an automatic response system that allows teachers create interactivity in the classroom via smartphones, laptops, and tablets. It does not require additional clickers.

Socrative is easy to install and use, taking a few minutes to set up. Once you have logged in through your smartphone, laptop, or tablet, you will be assigned a room number and prompted to select an activity: a multiple choice, true/false, or short answer question.

At the same time, your students will need to log in with the same room number to be able to receive your questions. 

Once the exercises have been completed you will receive an aggregated report, in an Excel file or as a Google spreadsheet.

Watch the video below to learn more or click here to go to Socrative

Following up on your students and yourself. (For Gmail users)

As a teacher you probably use email to communicate with your learners. Some of the things you may use it for are assigning tasks, ask questions, answer questions and request homework delivery among others.
Please see if any of the following apply to you:

1. You send a question or request a task, you get no immediate answer, and you forget about it until several weeks later (If you ever remember)
2. Your inbox is cluttered with emails you have to take action on the future, but not today or even this week.
3. You send yourself an email to remind you on something you must do in the future and it starts going down in your inbox. By the day you should be reminded, it is so down in your inbox that you don´t even see it.

If you answered yes to any of the previous situations and you use Gmail, then "Boomerang" can come to the rescue.
With "Boomerang" you will be able to be reminded to follow up on tasks you gave others, receive reminders of your own tasks the day you need to do them and clean your inbox of mails you must take action in the future, having them appear in your inbox the day you need them there.

To learn more about "Boomerang" watch the following video.

Continuing discussions outside the classroom

By Eduardo Mayorga

Many times, after a lecture and some discussion, time ends while still opportunity for discussion exists.
This discussion can be taken online using forums that usually are part of a learning management system.
Because not every residency program has a learning management system in place it is useful to know you can easily set up an online discussion using  "Google Moderator".

"Moderator" allows you to setup forums (called "series" ), where those you invite may post ideas, answers to the ideas and vote for the best ideas.

You may read more on how to use this tool clicking here. 

Publishing Documents as Magazines

By Dr. Helena Felipe

Issuu, http://issuu.com/ is a digital publishing platform that enables users to upload their authoring files featured as PDF and then have them published online ready to be “manipulated” as a journal.

We can have them all propped up in a personal shelf and share them with our own learning community.

We just have to create an account and once logged in it will be possible to upload as many files as we wish for free using the basic account features which are pretty much enough to accomplish what we have been describing.

When uploading documents we will be invited to provide their description and to define our target audience.

The basic account brings extra advertisements with it, usually related to our published topic and only allows printed material over payment.

After selecting the uploaded publication from the shelf we can then open it and view it interactive, page by page or selecting the specific pages in the timeline bellow.

http://issuu.com/hpriorfilipe/docs/lc_rgp#download

Publications can be downloaded, printed and shared using direct e-mails or/and social networks as facebook and twitter. There is already an app to use this tool with smartphones, making our documents ready to read on the go.

Learning by Playing

By Helena Filipe

Quizlet http://quizlet.com/ is a free learning tool allowing users to learn from sets of flash cards presenting a broad range of subjects including ophthalmology.

Learning content is organized in a set of thematic cards displaying as a slide show. Educators and learners can both benefit from creating their own set of cards on their topic of interest and also search in the site´s data base for a set containing their preferred studying subject.

An account should be created and by clicking on the home page button “ Create Set” you achieve the former and by clicking on the button “Find Sets” you got on to the latter. An excellent example of an already published set is “Ophthalmology Melanoma Flash Cards” set http://quizlet.com/8905805/uveal_melanoma-flash-cards/ elegantely created by Prof. Bertil Damato.

Content is built according to the rationale involving very clear definitions for specific questions (terms). Learning facts, processes and also concepts can be facilitated using smart an accurate flash cards content.

This free tool based on the Web allows interactive learning as a single learner as well as in a group of learners sharing similar goals. Work can be scalable also by sharing teaching/learning material in social networks as Face book and Twitter.