Falcon

=**Falcon Mark-up editor** =

Overview:
   ||  ||< Falcon is a nice editor to use if you want to add details to pictures or screen captures. When creating a document that shows others how to use an application, this mark-up editor is a great way to add emphasis, like arrows, to screen captures. Falcon is a quick and easy way to add text, shapes, arrows, or drawings to any image.
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Link to Aviary site

Link to Falcon wiki ||  || 
 * Educational Benefit:**

One of the best aspects of Falcon is that it is very simple to use. Someone with little knowledge of photo editors can easily use this to mark-up images. As I've mentioned, the ability to create and modify content is a powerful way to have students show what they know and Falcon provides a simple means to this end. One possible example would be to send students on a scavenger hunt through the school. Armed with digital cameras, they could take pictures of simple and compound machines in action. They could upload these pictures into Falcon and quickly add arrows and text that describes the machines they saw. A benefit that I could see to this would be that the students would get to search out examples as opposed to just copying the examples from the textbook (as typically happens if you ask students to draw examples of simple machines). This activity would require a higher degree of critical thinking because the students would need to understand the types of simple machines in order to find things to take pictures of. Another interesting aspect to this tool is the Talon FireFox plug-in. This is installed just like other plug-ins for the FireFox browser and it adds an Aviary tab to your top menu (see image below). With this plug-in, you can easily select areas of displayed web pages to mark-up in Falcon. I have included a video showing this: media type="custom" key="5265735" media type="custom" key="5265853"

This application also has a tutorial video that shows the basic function of the tool and a wiki that provides more specific details. media type="custom" key="5265727" Another benefit is that it is easy to transfer images from Falcon into Phoenix, Peacock, or Toucan.

I do not see any drawbacks to using this tool. Of all of the Aviary applications, this is by far the easiest to use. One reason for that is that it is a fairly simple tool; you need to use Phoenix to accomplish more complex manipulations.
 * Drawbacks:**

There are no specific articles referring to the use of a mark-up editor in an educational setting.
 * Literature review:**