SpeakingImage

SpeakingImage allows you to create interactive images on online and then share them with others. You can also create groups, add wikis and set different permissions to manage collaborative work. You can set markers on the work or add lines and polygons to highlight a point or fact. This is a great tool for highlighting details in a complicated image to your students, It could be used in art, science and technology classes really easily but I can see uses for this in most subject areas.

Each of the annotation has its own wiki connected to it so your class or group can continue to add articles or further information connected to the images.

http://www.speakingimage.org/

Glogster

Lots of people have heard of Glogster. It is a web 2.0 tool that allows you to construct interactive posters. It is great for students too and only requires a simple email login. The beauty of this tool is that it is truly multimedia. You can include images, text, music and video all on the one doucment. It is a digital collage that can have embedded hotspots that are activated by the viewer. This is literally a drag and drop tool that kids can be using within 5 minutes of introducing them to it. I just love the fact that students have to source the media, evaluate it's effectiveness and re-present it within a graphic context. A great way to achieve a deeper level of understanding than just using a traditional cut and paste collage.

http://edu.glogster.com/

Vuvox - The Digital Collage

Vuvox is a great Web 2.0 tool that allows you to create a continuous collage of images. The tool also allows you to create hotspots. A hotspot is an image that activates a text box, a piece of music or even a video. This is very effective when you need to add another layer of complexity to the information.  This tool is effective for creating narratives or even presenting numerous sources materials within the one image.

This may be a way that you present information to a class or it might be a task for students to collect, collate, evaluate and construct the collage to present a specific point of view. Most collages can be construct within a very short period of time once the images have been collected.

http://www.vuvox.com/