Introduction

Begin with a little online safety reminder. We will be searching the internet for images in this lesson and although the internet content is filtered, they should understand that no filter is 100% safe. They should stick to the sites and activities that they have been asked to look at, but if they do come across anything they think is inappropriate, they should immediately turn off the screen and calmly tell the teacher. 

If you are a North Tyneside school, you can request any sites that you think should be blocked by emailing the URL (web address) of the site to the corporate ICT help desk and explaining why you believe it should be blocked. Contact them at icthelpdesk@northtyneside.gov.uk

 

Recap the last lesson with the following questions:

• What is a search engine?
• Can you explain how they work?
• What different kinds of search engines did we talk about?
• What things affect your searches?
• What different ways can we search for things?
• How can we refine and improve our searches?

 

Image Searches

Explain that there is a lot more than first meets the eye when searching for images. There are lots of great tools to help you refine your searches and find specific types of images. For example if we were looking for an image of a flower, (depending on what you needed it for) how could we improve our search with other key words? 

 

• Blue / red / green flower
• Cartoon flower
• line drawing of a flower
• painting of a flower
• close up flower

 

These will all get quite different results. Both Bing and Google images also suggest related searches which can be useful. There are also search tools built into both to help you refine your searches. 

 

 

Ask them to look for and try out the following searches with a simple term like ‘flower’ or ‘car’: 

• By size
• Colour
• Type 
  • photo
  • line drawing 
  • animated etc
• Usage rights - How does this reduce what’s available? Why?

 

Every image on the web is owned by someone. Sometimes people give permission for others to use their images, sometimes they don’t (out of choice or ignorance). Creative Commons (CC) is a licence that anyone can apply to their work (including images) that tells others it’s okay for them to use it, and it’s important that we respect other people’s things and don’t just take without permission.

You can do a Creative Commons search here. Pexels, Unsplash and Photos for Class are other good sources of CC images. 

 

Saving Images

When you save an image from the web, there are also other things to consider, apart from usage rights. The size of the image can be important (this can be measured in pixels or megapixels).

Sometimes you want a large, high resolution image to add to some work. It might be for displaying on a large screen or printing out as a large poster, so you’d want the image to still look crisp and clear when enlarged. 

Use the ‘Search tools’ > ‘Size’ and work your way backwards from ‘Large’ if you can’t find what you are looking for. 

You can even specify exact dimensions in pixels if you know the size you’re looking for (go to the ‘Exactly’ option). This can be useful to help you find a particular shape of image to fit, for example, a banner on a website.

 

 

However, sometimes you might want a smaller (in size or resolution) image. This might be to use on a website (lower resolution images load much quicker on web pages). You can again use the ‘Search tools’ to look for smaller images, or add a file extension to your search term, e.g. flower.gif (.gif files are commonly used for images created for the web)

When saving the image, never save the first thumbnail of the image that appears in the search results (unless you want a very small version of it!).

 

 

Ask the children what is a ‘thumbnail’ image? (a much smaller and lower resolution of the image - so it loads quickly in the search results) If they save it and stretch it in a piece of work you will often see the image blur or pixelate (which looks awful) as the pixels get stretched so much that we can see them. 

 

 

Instead, click on the thumbnail to open it, then click the ‘View image’ button, then save it by right-clicking and ‘save image as’ (or the equivalent as some browsers vary)  There are examples to illustrate this in the teacher presentation.

 

Main task

Can the students use the search tools to quickly and accurately find and save:

1. A large photo of a red telephone
2. A line drawing of house
3. The icon for Google Chrome (icon sized)
4. A black and white cartoon elephant
5. A Creative Commons image of the Tyne bridge

 

Plenary

Recap their understanding of today’s key points: What search tools did we discover today? What does Creative Commons mean? What are low and high resolution images, when might you want to use each?