Maristas Mediterránea
Professor Ian Johnston
Departamento de Sociales
Introduction
From the development of communication skills and digital competences to school projects and marketing campaigns, schools today rely heavily on the power of images and photos. For that reason, it was clear for us that partnering with Pixlr was the best way to achieve our goals and meet our needs. Pixlr for Education offers unique advantages:
- A completely free plan for eligible schools (yes, for teachers and students!)
- A no installation required web based complete image editing and creation platform (free up your device space)
- Cloud-based protection and storage for all of your work (never lose another project)
- Simple and intuitive AI-based editing tools (no steep learning curves)
- Templates for almost any project or design you could imagine (100% customizable)
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. For any school or educational organization considering if Pixlr is the right choice for you, let’s see some specific user cases of how it has been deployed and used daily in the Maristas Mediterránea schools.
Presenting Your School in its Best Light!
As with any centre or institution, we are constantly active within social media (school webpage, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube etc.) In fact, the photos and images we share often directly inform the image parents and outside groups have of your centre.
But does your school take the time to properly revise and prepare this image it projects to the outside world? Here at Maristas Mediterránea, every teacher can now quickly improve and correct any image before publishing it online. Thanks to Pixlr X, with just a few clicks and easy sliders, you can resolve problems with shadows, unclear areas, over exposure and can even correctly balance and level horizons. There’s no more excuses for not presenting your school in its best light!
Another high priority in your school must be “uniformity”: use of school colours, logos, watermarks, and themes. With Pixlr, you can easily provide all your users with these assets, guaranteeing that every photo and image complies with school standards. These images can then be published online or printed as your school needs.
Templates and Images
Have you ever been in charge of creating a poster for a school event? For a sports team or school club? Like in any work of creativity, starting from a blank page can be daunting.
Here in Maristas Mediterránea, we wanted to help teachers and students begin by proving them with a helping hand. Enter Pixlr Templates and images. Pixlr provides hundreds of 100% customizable templates for everything from posters to social media posts, all with the correct dimensions for ease of publication.
In addition, you can count on the extensive Pixlr photo resource bank. In our school, we can search by keywords for any image, subject or object that we want to add to our social media posts. No need to worry about copyright problems as Pixlr photos covers all educational use cases.
Protecting Data
As an educational institution at secondary level, Maristas Mediterránea, like any school, is responsible for the protection of data: names, students identity, sensitive information about the school etc.
When your school publishes images and photos, you may have the need to blur our sensitive information. We sometimes have to protect the identity of underage students, remove unwanted information such as car licence plates, names or surnames on sports equipment etc.
Pixlr provides us a complete solution, from blurring to completely removing any element from a photo. In just a few clicks, AI can help you protect any data before making images public.
Classwork, Projects and Clubs
With Pixlr for Education, both teachers and students get full access to the Pixlr platform. At Maristas Mediterránea, we knew this provided us with a unique opportunity to develop and grow our students’ visual and communication skills.
From presentations, posters, covers, thumbnails, collages, scrapbooks and creative compositional art to photo competitions and online campaigns, our students are constantly active in and out of the classroom and need access to fast and intuitive tools that help them complete their projects.
Digital Competences
It’s clear that technology is becoming increasingly integrated into all aspects of the work environment, and at Maristas Mediterránea digital illiteracy is a skill we actively develop. Here in Europe, schools have been tasked with the DigiComp 2.0 list of digital competences that all teachers and students need to develop. In fact, studies show it’s quickly becoming essential in the labour market.
Working with Pixlr, our students get hands-on experience with design, working with colour, balance, common image file formats, content creation and a lot more. Through active learning, they familiarize themselves with key tools of the design and image trade.
Conclusion
The education community is becoming increasingly more demanding about the types of resources it needs to continue to fuel teaching and learning. For that reason, we didn’t think twice about choosing to work with Pixlr. The combination of powerful features and ease of use not only solved problems that the school was facing, but propelled student potential. Pixlr in the hands of your teachers and students quickly becomes a go-to everyday tool for fast solutions, easy creativity and endless inspiration.