Back To School Surf
Summer is gone?
Yup. JMU opens in just a few short weeks, and I know most of the other schools around the country can't be far behind. So, for this issue I thought we'd just take a little surf in search of information on school and education to see if we couldn't turn up some good references.Discovery.com
Our first stop is at an area originally from a young person in Pennsylvania. Once called "B.J. Pinchbeck's Homework Helper" this area featuring lots of great things to do and learn is now a part of the wonderful Discovery.com site. This one's probably the best we visited, and has won many, many awards.As you know I'm an easy sell any time I see the words "clip art" -- so when I clicked to the clip art button it took me to a pretty sweet collection of images... all sorts of categories are represented inclucing technology, teachers" and my favorite The Art Department Some of the images are very nice like this water color bookbag
The Study Web Site
Another excellent site visited briefly was the Study Web site which boasts the largest collection of research quality references on the web! (Over 73,000 so they say.) You click into categories such as Composition, Criminology, Philosophy, Religion, Animals/Pets, and Geography, then tunnel deeper into those topics. Unfortunately it requires ID and Password, but we didn't have time to sign up.Sidetracked by the lust for clip art
As we surfed we continued seeing links to clip art. Unfortunately most of them click to "Clip Art Central" or ClipArtWorld and many other 'replicator' sites from Art Today -- which employs porno-style pop-up stalkers in all the sites, and shows only the worst art until you purchase something. So we steered clear of those.At Go Promo dot com we ran across a number of good items in their idea center including a fare collection of free educational clip art in the form of symbols and stylized drawings. All are in low-res, so they're not much use for printing unless used very small.
At the The Norwood Street School in Los Angeles, CA theres a nice collection of pleasant Education Clip Art which is also low-resolution, but Royalty Free.
Your printer sites like Epson.com and HP.com are good sources as well as many of the paper mill sites. At the Avery "Home Center" we found not only a number of good images but a fairly well stocked "Idea Center" offering tips and tricks for using the art. (On Avery products of course.)
Two sites for the health conscience
Food & Health online offers a free "Clip of the Month" with some rather nice images -- and the Green Nature site offering a collection of art built around environmental and nature themes. Some of it is good, but much of it is either bad, or "borrowed" from other sources. They have a nice interface and good listings.Finally we wandered into the "Padiham at St. Leonards" site in the United Kingdom offering not only some free clip, but an actual curriculum area as well. The site is interesting and you'll want to poke around in that site a bit just to see what they're all about.
A good time was had by all
Even though it didn't produce much in the way of usable art, it was a fun surf. Hopefully you'll find some things you can use herein, and as usual, if you run across something really good, pass it along to your fellow DTG readers for next time!
Thanks for reading
Editor / Publisher, DT&G Magazine
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