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Introduction
Digital pictures come in a variety of formats. Raster images are bitmap, pixel-based pictures. Web images are in this format. They are perfectly adequate for screen display, but they cannot be easily edited without some artistic skill. Low-resolution raster images will go jagged at the edges when they are resized. Vector images are made up of groups of lines and shapes. They are scaleable without distortion. The files can be "ungrouped" in a drawing package and the constituent shapes and lines edited. For example, the English words on the vector image of a UK road sign can be replaced with an equivalent text in the foreign language. Vector imagery mostly comes in CD collections that can be purchased from local computer stores.
Raster imagery
Google Image Search simplifies the task of finding raster images on the World Wide Web to illustrate vocabulary or grammar points. Here is an exemplification of the pairing of items in a vocabulary list with text images found using this method. Listed below are collections of digital pictures in this format which have been specially compiled for language teaching purposes.
- Royalty-Free Clip Art Collection for Foreign/Second Language Instruction: Verbs, Adjectives, Nouns (Buildings and places; Food and drinks; People and animals; Things and events; Time; Vehicle; Medical), Pronouns.
- UVic's Language Teaching Clipart Library: 1500 different images, each available in colour and monochrome versions. The topics covered are animals, body, buildings, clothing, colours, communication, emotions, food, furniture, general, greeting, human, jewellery, jobs, landscape, location, music, numbers, plants, prepositions, relationships, school, shape, shopping, signs sports, time, tools, toys, travel, utensils weather.
- Virtual Picture Album: A collection of pictures compiled by the Less Commonly Taught Languages Project at the University of Minnesota.
- The Realia Project: The goal of the REALIA Project is to develop and implement a searchable digitised media database which will provide instructors of modern languages with teaching resources accessible via the Web.
- ESL Images: pictures for vocabulary and grammar teaching.
- Taskmagic Primary French Pictures: simple jpeg pictures made to support the Primary French Schemes of Work.
- French Clipart and photographs: a dozen images.
- CAPL-German: Culturally Authentic Pictorial Lexicon: Art & architecture; banking and money; business and industry; city life; clothing; dates and festivals; food and drink; free time and entertainment; German history; health and fitness; house and home; jobs and careers; nature; public officials; regions, tourism and holiday; school and university; shopping; sports and games; telecommunications; transportation; various realia.
- Modern Foreign Languages Environment Image Bank: Learning and Teaching Scotland's bank of MFL-related clipart. Topics covered: Shops, hotels and restaurants; Sightseeing, view and landmarks; Transport; Animals; Early Years Illustrations; Health promoting schools gallery; Food, drink and markets; Work and leisure; Notices and public signs; Weather and seasons; 5-14 illustrations.
Vector imagery
So far as I am aware, there are no collections of digital images in this format specially compiled for language teaching purposes. However, the hundreds of thousands of scaleable vector images available online and on CD can be easily exploited in the foreign language classroom. A big book of "thumbnail" pictures illustrating the graphics files stored on disc often accompanies the CD-based collections. Digital drawing packages such as CorelDraw usually come with a large collection of clipart.
- Microsoft Office clipart library can be reached online. It is divided into the following sections: Abstract, Academic, Agriculture, Animals, Arts, Astrology, Backgrounds, Black & White, Buildings, Business, Cartoons, Character Collections, Colorful, Communications, Concepts, Decorative Elements, Emotions, Fantasy, Flags, Food, Government, Healthcare, Household, Industry, Leisure, Maps, Nature, Occupations, Pastel, People, Personal Appearance, Plants, Realistic, Religion, Sciences, Seasons, Signs, Sites, Special Occasions, Sports, Symbols, Technology, Tools, Transportation, Travel, Weather and Web Elements. Try doing a search with the keywords "French", "German" or "Spanish" and you may find target-language country signs and monuments.
- Art Explosion 800000 comes with 34 CDs and an 1800-page printed catalogue. It can be ordered online or purchased at a local computer superstore. This is a huge collection of vector clipart, covering many topics of interest to the foreign language teacher and learner.
- ClickArt 750000 Images is an inexpensive clipart collection on 5 CD-ROMs. It comes with a keyword search facility.
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