Yesterday, I found a postcard creation tool and lesson on Read Write Think. The RWT Postcard Creator walks students through the process of addressing, writing, and mailing a postcard. It’s a nice little activity, but as I was trying it I couldn’t help but wonder how relevant it is to today’s students who may go never send a postcard because all of their communications happen digitally. As I thought about the RWT lesson I started to brainstorm a list of tools that can be used by students to send virtual postcards to their friends and family.

Instagram was the first option that came to mind even though it can’t be used by students under 13.

PicMonkey is a free photo editing tool that can be used by anyone without registering on the site. Using PicMonkey you can apply many different frames and effects to your images. PicMonkey has text editing options that could be used to create a greeting on your image.

PicSay is an Android app (free and pro versions available) that students can use to add text and special effects to their images before sharing them with friends.

Animoto could be used by students to create and email short video postcards.

AudioBoo can be used to record short audio messages. Images can be attached to the messages. AudioBoos is available on the web, on iOS devices, and on Android devices.

Applications for Education
All of these resources could be used in a “back to school” activity that students complete to introduce themselves to you and their classmates. Students can work with images to create short introductions that highlight their favorite people, places, and things.