letters



Sometimes lettering, text, or fonts can make a big difference in the way things look and can actually aid in comprehension! Think about text features. In a science book, vocabulary words might be bold, some text might be italicized, some words might be in color. If you want something to be really obvious you might even choose a different font. Text is changing! There are so many fonts to choose from with options for bold, italics, condensed, light, and more. Give students the opportunity to be creative with Spell with Flickr, scrabble letters, and a variety of fonts!

How do you like the title of this page? Looks a little like a ransom note. This lettering is called 'Spell with Flickr'. Spell with Flickr randomly picks photos of letters that are housed at Flickr.
 * Go to Spell with Flickr.
 * In the blank box following the word 'Spell' type in a word and click on 'spell'
 * Your word will show up two times. In the top one click on any letter and it will generate a different style. Keep clicking on the letters until you are satisfied with the letters.
 * Take a screen shot (Apple/Shift/4) of your selection.
 * Now you can add it to your newsletter, presentation software, etc.

Scrabble letters
 Download the scrabble letters from Flickr. You'll have to take a screen shot of each letter. This will take a few minutes but then you'll have them and can use them over and over again. I put mine in an album in iPhoto so when I'm working in Keynote, Pages, Comic Life, etc. they'll be easy to get to. I've also added them to ActivInspire so I can pull them out on the fly.
 * Do you see an opportunity here for some mental math? Create a word with the scrabble letters. Have students add the value, or multiply the value of each letter.
 * Can they find a word with a large amount of points?
 * In ActivInspire, create a page with all the scrabble letters at the top. Make each letter 'drag a copy.' Pull out 7 letters just like in scrabble. See what words can be made from those letters. What is the point value of the words?
 * Students can find the value of their name using Scrabble letters. Which name has the most points? Which name has the least points? What if you multiplied instead of added the values?
 * <span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">Use the scrabble letters for a title in a presentation, in a brochure, on nametags, on a thank you note!

<span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;"> <span class="wiki_link_ext">Free Mac Fonts Your Mac or PC comes installed with quite a variety of fonts. There are many, many more fonts available if needed. I love the holiday fonts or fonts that match the curriculum, such as Chinese Takeaway during the study of Ancient China. To find more fonts, do a Google search for 'free Mac fonts' or 'free PC fonts'. The link here is for Mac fonts. Click on Free Mac Fonts <span class="wiki_link_ext">and find a font you'd like to have added to your computer. Click on 'Click to Download'. Now look in your downloads folder for the zipped folder. Double click on the zipped folder. Next click on the name of the font. This will show you all the letters of the alphabet in that font. Click on 'Install font.' The font will be added to your list of fonts. It's that simple!

<span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">You might be wondering why I haven't been more clever with fonts on this wiki. Well, fonts on the web are a little different than fonts used in documents or presentations. Only certain fonts are available in this wiki and for posting on the web. I'm using Comic Sans - a pretty standard font. If your computer doesn't have Comic Sans the font will be changed to a default font on your computer, which just might mess up the formatting of the text. Therefore, when posting to the web, only a few certain fonts are suggested, fonts that are pretty common on all computers. <span style="color: #800000; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">I created these in Pages and added picture frames (see Dec. 10th) and took screen shots of them in order to add them here.