Adviser Update Fall 2014 | Page 5

20A FALL 2014 Technology by Gary Clites ADVISER UPDATE Eight sites students can use to build unique and creative photo illustrations by black Unleashing the power of image generators C Gary Clites has been technology columnist for Adviser Update for over a dozen years. He served for over a decade as president of the MarylandDC Scholastic Press Association, received a Columbia Gold Key Award in 2008, and was a 2004 Distinguished Journalism Adviser in the DJNF National Journalism Teacher of the Year program. An archive of his articles on his website is available at www.garyclites. com. He can be reached at gclites@ comcast.net. Motivator (http://bighugelabs.com/motivator. php) You know those iconic white print on black motivational posters featuring a big photo in the center (as constantly featured in Barney’s office in “How I Met Your Mother”)? There are a number of sites that let you generate them. Motivator is a supersmooth one that creates big, printable images. Easily upload your photo, enter your text, and you can illustrate your work with very believable encouraging posters. oming up with illustrations for stories, especially those for which action photos or likely photo illustrations are not available or easily created, is a constant challenge for student journalists. With the explosion of social media, however, have come a plethora of sites on the Internet designed to generate unique and clever illustrations. Sure, they’re designed for use on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, but they can also be used to generate images you can use to dress up layouts that might otherwise be difficult to illustrate. Meme Generator (http://www.reasonablyclever.com/ mini/flash/minifig.swf) “The Lego Movie” made Lego-ized characters all the rage. The Mini-Mizer site pre-dates the movie by a lot, but it allows you to easily build Lego-like characters out of a library of parts to look a lot like just about anyone yo B