I have a great picture but it has a great big white space around it. How do I make that go away?

eZediaMX has a lot of friendly, easy-to-use tools that allow you to work with graphics and photos right on the document frame without going anywhere else. This is great for students because they're not having to open and close files all over the place. 

We can find great graphics on the web - even ones that are free for educators to use, but they may show up in your frame with a big white box around them. If you're using a colored background or if you want to include the picture as part of a scene, that can be a problem in other programs, but not in eZedia. 

Solution: Just click on the drop-down menu icon in the top, left-hand corner of your graphic or right-click on the graphic and choose Edit Graphic. Click on the top icon. It will turn your cursor into a cross-hair. Click on the color you want to become transparent. A slider bar will appear. Drop it down to 0 to make all the color go away. Click on the little "X" in the Edit Graphic box and you are done. Simple, isn't it?

Here's our before picture:

Here's our after picture:

As an extra help, I've got a short video clip that shows exactly how to do this. The file is zipped/compressed and you will need to "unzip" it to view it. To download the clip, click here.

What's next? Creating our pictures and after that, going to path animation

This next image shows another piece of clipart combined with our friendly dragon and some additional images that were drawn in eZedia with the Shape Tool. The really cool thing to do would not be to just create a static picture of the dragon in town for a walk, but to use the Path Tool and draw a path. Click and drag the dragon (how appropriate!!) to the path, let go, and watch him go cruising across your frame. Even a primary-age child can do this and will have great fun doing so. The first question they ask is how do you slow down the dragon? That's just a double-click on the path to bring up the object information box and you show them the number for delay. You explain that the smaller the number, the faster he/she goes! The children seem to catch on without much explanation. They're ready to dive right in. If you do need to provide a richer explanation of what's happening then try this demonstration. Line up three children as if they were to race. The first child can take a step every time they say "one." The second child can take a step every time they count to five. The third child can take a step every time they count to ten. Have them "race" across the room. It's a quick way for children to understand how delay works.

 

You might be interested to know where I got the friendly dragon in the frame above. He/She was courtesy of Netscape. They have free clipart available through their channels. The exact location of our friend is: http://channels.netscape.com/ns/screen/gallery.jsp?gname=miscellaneous&photo=4

The building came from: http://channels.netscape.com/ns/screen/gallery.jsp?gname=buildings1

There are links to webcams at the site. Webcams can be a wonderful way to introduce children to another part of the world and Netscape has provided some good links that way, BUT they can also yield some nasty surprises when you least expect it. Unless I knew without a doubt that every webcam was educational, I wouldn't have children go there. However, in fairness to Netscape, I do have to tell you where I got my free images.