There are many places on the Internet to find truly great pictures, and it is so easy to enhance your presentations or handouts with a captivating photograph. This month's Tech Tip helps you save commonly used pictures in the "Gallery" that Microsoft Word (and other Office applications) accesses when you open the Insert/Picture/Clip Art menu option. For example, you might want to use Image Libraries to...

• Store photos in categories for each of your important units. Students may then select photos to insert in their reports without needing to surf the web.
• Pull together a collection of artwork as you find them that may be used to teach a history unit later in the school year.
• Collect animal pictures and graphics for a special project.
• Store designs/backgrounds for web site development.
• Collect pictures related to science vocabulary. Students may access these to create flash cards for review.

Before you use any digital image make sure that you pay attention to the copyright laws associated with any images you might want to use. Under US Code, Title 17, Section 107: Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use states:

A good place to start to find some additional clip art, photographs, and sounds is Microsoft's own Design Gallery Live. Another photographic-rich site for current and historical events, travel, adventure and maps is National Geographic.com.

1. Start your Internet browser
2. Find the web site that contains a picture you like.

For Windows: position the cursor over the image and click on the right mouse button. Select Save picture as…(choose a location to save the picture).
For Macintosh: position the cursor over the image and hold down on the mouse. Select Download image to…(choose a location to save the picture, and make a note of its name).

3. Click OK

Once you've saved a picture you can now add it to the Clip Gallery located in any of Microsoft's applications. To do this, follow this next set of instructions.

To add images to the Clip Gallery:

1. Open one of Microsoft's applications.
2. On the Insert menu, choose Picture, Clip Art
3. On the Clip Art tab, click Import Clips
4. Locate your image that you saved
5. Select the image, and then click Open.
6. Add any keywords you want, select the categories or create a new category to store the image in, and then click OK.

Pass this tip onto your students as it could help them save some time when they are researching a topic on the Internet and come across pictures they might like to include in a report or multimedia presentation.

To insert a clip art picture into a document:

1. First, click the mouse where you want the picture to appear inyour document.
2. Choose Insert, Picture, Clip Art
3. Either click on a category or type a descriptive word(s) in thesearch box then press Enter.
4. When you find a picture to insert, click on the picture and then click Insert.

To resize a picture:

1. Click once in the middle of the picture to select it (boxes, resizing handles, appear around the edges).
2. Drag from one of the resizing handles to make the picture smalleror larger. (* Drag from a corner box to keep the picture in proportion.)
3. Click off of the picture (click in an empty space on your document) when you are finished resizing the picture.

To put a border around the picture:

1. Click on the picture.
2. Choose Format, Borders and Shading.
3. Select a border setting from the choices on the left.
4. Select a style from the many choices (i.e. thin, thick, dotted line).
5. Select a line color.
6. Choose the width that you desire, then click OK to see the changes.

To wrap text around a picture:

1. Click on the picture
2. Choose Format, Picture.
3. Click the wrapping tab, then select the wrapping options you want.
4. Click OK.

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