Pixie 2

© 2006 Tech4Learning, Inc.
$45, Windows XP, Mac OSX
Teaches: creativity, art
CTR Rating: 86%
Editor's Choice

CTR Review

Looking for a solid drawing program for Mac or Windows computers? Pixie is a classroom friendly, no-gimmicks creativity drawing tool that will work well in a school setting despite a few rough spots (described below). You start with a blank page, surrounded by icons for text, paint brushes, an eraser, lines, shapes, fill, an image scrambler, an eyedropper for sampling colors and a smearing tool for blending colors. There are 256 color options displayed on the bottom of the screen along with a library of stickers that can be dragged onto the picture and resized. Each option is also available as a standard drop down menu, which is nice. To add text, you first select the text insertion tool which creates a text box on the screen, that can be edited at any point. We liked how it is possible to go back and reposition text and sticker elements. It is also possible to record sounds with a picture, if you have a microphone. Importing JPG photos for altering is easy, and you can also export work in five common formats, including JPG and BMP. So this is a versatile graphics utility. Weaknesses include some sluggishness when switching between menu items on the Mac OSX version, and there are no text-to-speech options. Also, when you resize a brush using the slider bar, the process isn't WYSIWYG. In other words, there's a bit of guess work involved which adds to the complexity of the interface. Missing also are advance art features such as different textures. Like early versions of KidPix, this program makes it easy to make slide shows out of children's work, and there's a nice variety of classroom ideas. For example, if you are focusing in on the Science Curriculum, you may want to choose Nutrition. Your background picture will be a place setting and then children can choose nutritional food from the sticker gallery. All in all, this could be a useful classroom tool and is a viable replacement for KidPix. We tested both the Mac and Windows versions, with no glitches.