I wanted a creative way to compile and share my pictures from my recent trip with Curriculet to CUE 2014 conference in Palm Springs, California. Searching through the Chrome Web Store, I found Loupe Collage. Similar to creating a customized word cloud in Tagxedo, Loupe Collage allows users to pull in pictures from Facebook, Google +, Drive, Dropbox, Twitter, the web, Instagram, and files (ok, everywhere) to create a collage where the shape and background can be customized. Once the collage is created, users can share it via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Gmail, Drive, link, and embed.
I am really impressed with the ease of this tool. I grabbed all my pictures from CUE and pulled in those that others took and shared with me to create the collage below. It took me just a few minutes to create! While I love social photography, I do get overwhelmed trying to manage the photos, and while I have automatic backup of my pictures via Facebook and Google +, I don't often do much with the pictures after they are backed up. Using Loupe Collage, I can create a collage for each special event and share it with my colleagues, friends and family who were also there. To see each image, simply hover over it to enlarge.
Rather appropriate, this is my 100th blog post. While I write about edtech tools and activities, what is more important are the people and enriching experiences. Edtech is more so about fostering connections than the tool itself. The technology brings us all together: friends, colleagues, companies, we are all digital compatriots. Thank you all for reading, sharing, and collaborating.