Wednesday’s Site of the Day!
I am little late with these posts this week. I’m going to try to be a little more consistent and get these posts in on time.
Anyway, today’s site is a great one that combines web 2.0 with art. It’s called Mr.Picassohead (http://www.mrpicassohead.com/). You probably remember Mr. Potatohead, that venerable potato that quite often had facial issues. You put the pieces of the face on the potato to create any variety of face you wanted.
Like Mr. Potatohead, Mr. Picassohead allows you to create faces using a variety of pre-designed facial features. You simply drag the features onto the palette and arrange 
the pieces into a face. The editing features allow you to colour the lines (not the rest of the picture though), make the lines bigger or smaller, move objects and rotate as well as erase any features you don’t like.
While creating faces is great fun, the really neat thing is to have your students use the facial features to create other kinds of pictures. I have had students create boats on water, volcanoes exploding and other things. Usuall, what I do in my class is have the students start out with making faces and exploring the process of creating faces. Then I have them create a picture of someone who is a hero to them. After the students have done that, I challenge them to create a picture that is not a face. I usually show them an example of something I have done to help get them started as well as brainstorming what each facial feature could represent.
There is one thing to be careful of and a caveat. The caveat is that there is no option to print the image within the site. It can be printed through the file -> print option. However, you get the whole page with all the editing and such. I usually print them off, get the students to cut out the picture and glue them on a piece of construction paper with a black frame around it. There is also a gallery of portraits done by others in the gallery part of the site. While there are some neat pictures in there, some can be inappropriate. I don’t allow my students into the gallery area and so we have not had a problem with that.
Anyway, enjoy the site!!! Why don’t you let us know what you have used it for in your class!
