One for the Interactive Whiteboard: Jigsaw Planet October 10, 2009
Posted by loislindemann in : interactive whiteboard, teacher tools , add a commentJigsaw Planet is a site that allows you to upload images and create jigsaws from them. You can then challenge someone to complete the puzzle. It makes a really nice activity for the interactive whiteboard. Click on one of the images below to try an example:
Eiffel Tower
How to draw a pie chart The site is free (there are options to purchase software, but I haven’t tried this), but there are a couple of limitations: the images cannot be larger than 2048 x 2048 pixels and they must be in jpeg format.
The person completing the online jigsaw has the option to view the image, or use a ‘ghost’ – a faint copy of the image to help them.
Images don’t have to be restricted to pictures, I’ve created some examples that include text as well. The possibilities are endless, you can create jigsaws from photos, diagrams, maps, revision notes, mind maps, family trees, sequences of numbers or sequences of diagrams…
Since this activity involves asking students to look at an image in great detail, it could be used in a variety of ways, with or without the image and/or ghost options:
- as a lesson starter, with a follow up discussion about the image
- as an introduction to a topic
- as a revision tool
- to encourage students to look closely at the detail in a map
- to ask students to use what they know about a family (eg from history, or from a book, or from clues in a logic problem) to reconstruct a family tree
- as a way of asking students to think about patterns in sequences of numbers or diagrams
- if a symmetrical design is used, students can use the properties of the design to help them complete the puzzle
The jigsaws don’t have to be used on an interactive whiteboard, teachers can also provide links to allow students to complete these on a computer (perhaps as part of a web quest) or even embed them in a class web page. Alternatively, why not ask the students to create an image and make a puzzle of their own?
Any more ideas or suggestions? Feel free to leave a comment.
…and finally – a big thank you to Tom Barrett for sharing this idea.
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