Category Archives: Useful Web Tools

Edit Images Online Using Pixlr

If you ever need to edit images then you might like to know about the free image editing tool available on the web called Pixlr: http://pixlr.com/. Pixlr is reminiscent of the popular image editing package Photoshop, only it’s available online, so wherever you have web access you can create and save images. As well as all the regular image editing activities such as cropping, changing brightness and colour saturation, the Pixlr Editor will also accept screen shots pasted in from the clipboard. These could then be annotated to help produce learning materials. It’s worth having a look at if you make use of images in your learning materials. Pixlr is also available as an app for your mobile phone.

Create and Share Flow Charts using Lucidchart

If you have ever wanted to draw a flow chart or mind map for a presentation or as part of a document and have spent ages trying to get to grips with the drawing tools in PowerPoint or Word, you may be interested to find out about Lucidchart: https://www.lucidchart.com/.

Lucidchart is a free, online tool for creating flow charts. You can easily drag and drop shapes onto the canvas, edit the text and link boxes together to create the chart you want. Charts can be exported in a number of formats, making it easy to add them to documents or presentations. Lucidchart also allows you invite others to work on charts with you, to generate the code to embed your chart on a web page or to share your charts via social media.

Using Doodle for Arranging Meetings

Doodle is a web-based scheduling service. It allows you easily to set up a web page where potential attendees of a meeting can go and declare their availability (or not) at a series of proposed times and dates by filling in a simple online form. You can then revisit the web site and easily see which is the most convenient time to schedule the meeting based on people’s responses. This service is especially useful for helping to timetable meetings with people who are not members of the University of Stirling community and who thus will not have access to the Microsoft Outlook Calendar Tool. For further details on using Doodle, view this guide on the Information Services web site:
http://www.stir.ac.uk/media/schools/is/documents/Doodle.pdf

Doodle may not always display correctly in Internet Explorer 9 if Compatibility View is turned on. Do > Tools > Compatibility View Settings > and then uncheck the Display all websites in Compatibility View option. Restarting IE9 after this should display Doodle okay.