Pixabay Now Has an Office Plug-in

Pixabay is one of my go-to sites for public domain images. If you need a picture to use in your slideshow, document, or other multimedia project, Pixabay is a great site to search. Recently, Pixabay started promoting a new Word and PowerPoint plug-in.

The new Pixabay Word and PowerPoint plug-in lets you search for public domain images without having to exit the document or slideshow that you are working on. Once you find an image through the plug-in you can add it to your doc or slideshow with just one click. Resizing, repositioning, and cropping images is done the same way it is with any other image that you upload to your document or presentation.

Applications for Education
The Pixabay plug-in for Word and PowerPoint could be a great resource for students and teachers in Microsoft-based environments. Being able to search for an image without having to open a new window could help keep students focused on the task of creating a presentation without getting distracted by a full web search. And since Pixabay images are in the public domain, you and your students don't have to worry about copyright infringement issues.

If You Teach Science, You Need Science Netlinks

Science Netlinks offers dozens of lesson plans and online learning activities. The lessons and activities are cover a wide variety of science topics. All of the lesson plans are sorted by grade level, but you can also sort the lesson plans by science benchmark standards. A series of icons also indicates if each lesson plan has a printable worksheet, e-worksheet, or is an interactive experience.

Applications for Education
Science Netlinks provides science teachers with a good collection of lesson plans aligned to the benchmarks for Science Literacy. In addition to lesson plans, Science Netlinks offers a selection of reviewed resource websites for K-12 science teachers.