Help ?
Step 1: Choose A Picture

Choose an image that relates to your personal experience, reflects a topic you teach or an interested in, or sparks curiosity. Use one of the four methods below to load images into the selection gallery. Then, select an image for students to crop.

The Library of Congress creates collections of primary sources along with resources for teaching their stories. You can explore their Classroom Materials collections at https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/, and you can directly load classroom materials photographs from this gallery.

Choose a Library of Congress Primary Source Collection from the dropdown menu to load the images in that collection.
Click on a picture to select it for your crop-it game.

TPS Teachers Network is a website where teachers can create and share curated collections of Library of Congress primary sources. Paste a TPS Teachers Network collection link in the field below and click the button to load the pictures in that collection.
The link should be in the format https://tpsteachersnetwork.org/album/....

Paste any Library of Congress Control Number here and click "Load from LOCCN".
You can find a resource's LOCCN on its LOC resource page.

Paste the URL to an image here and click "Load Custom Picture".

Selection Gallery

Selected Image Preview

Step 2: Curate Questions and Thinking Prompts

Choose some prompts from the options below. You can also delete, modify, reorder and write your own prompts by clicking on them. Some questions have already been chosen.

>
Think:
Prompt:

How to use the Crop-It Creator

Step 1. Choose a picture

In this step you will need to select an image to serve as the primary resource for your Crop-It. There are 4 different methods for loading your selected image into Crop-It:

Library of Congress Classroom Materials

This method allows you to browse the Library of Congress image database directly within the Crop-It Creator.


Directions:
  1. Make sure the "Library of Congress Classroom Materials" button is selected.
  2. Click on the dropdown menu and scroll through the image category options. Select the category that you think is best aligned to your needs.
  3. Click the "Load Into Selection Gallery" button in order to load from the Library of Congress collections.
  4. Scroll through the Selection Gallery block as the images load in. If you want to look closer at any image, select it and scroll down to the "Selected Image Preview" block.
  5. The image that appears in your "Selected Image Preview" block will be the image on your Crop-It.

TPS Teacher Network Collection

This method allows you to browse the Library of Congress primary source collections created by teachers in the TPS network directly within the Crop-It Creator.

*Note: Public URL links to the many teacher made primary source collections from the Library of Congress called, TPS Albums, will load if you paste the link to the album here. To make your own album or find the teacher-made albums, create an account at https://tpsteachersnetwork.org

Directions:
  1. Make sure the "TPS Teacher Network Collection" button is selected.
  2. Paste the full page link of TPS primary source album you would like to load in. Make sure the link follows the following format: https://tpsteachersnetwork.org/album/…
  3. After pasting your link click the "Load from TPS Album" button in order to populate the Selection Gallery with images.
  4. Scroll through the Selection Gallery block as the images load in. If you want to look closer at any image, select it and scroll down to the "Selected Image Preview" block.
  5. The image that appears in your "Selected Image Preview" block will be the image on your Crop-It.

Library of Congress Control Number (Item ID)

This method allows you to use any image in the Library of Congress Image Catalog.

Directions:
  1. Make sure the "Library of Congress Control Number (Item ID)" button is selected.
  2. Open https://www.loc.gov/pictures/ in a new tab to search through the Library of Congress online image catalog. Follow the Library’s instructions for navigating the database.
  3. Once you have navigated your way to a resource page for a single image, you will find the Control Number on the end of the page’s web address.
    For example: If the image I would like to use is on https://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/pan/item/2007661157/, the Control Number I should use is 2007661157.
  4. Enter the Item ID into the input bar on the Crop-It page and press the "Load from LOC Item Page".
  5. The image will appear in your "Selected Image Preview" block and will be the image on your Crop-It.

Custom Image URL

This method allows you to use any image with a public web address.


Directions
  1. Make sure the "Custom Image URL" button is selected.
  2. Find any image that you would like to use and make sure it is hosted on a public webpage. Photos hosted on local machines and private web pages can not be used.
  3. Right-click on an image and select "Copy Image Address" to copy the image URL to your clipboard, then paste the link into the Crop-It input bar and click the "Load Custom Picture" button.
  4. The image will appear in your "Selected Image Preview" block and will be the image on your Crop-It.

Step 2. Curate Questions and Thinking Prompts

In this step you will curate and/or write the set of questions that will help your students think deeply about the image you chose in Step 1.

Each question in Crop-It has a Prompt and Think component. Prompt provides students with instructions about what to look for and select in the image. Think invites them to explain a specific aspect of why they selected the area that they did. Try a Crop-It from the Crop-It Example Gallery to get an idea of how Think and Prompt work together to form a question and engage students in deep inquiry.

Directions
  1. Make sure the "Custom Image URL" button is selected.
  2. Scroll through the Question Set Bank to read through the available Question Sets. By default, the "Who, What, When, Where, Why" Question Set will be loaded into your question selection but if you click on any other set your selected question section will be repopulated by the questions from your newly selected set.
  3. You can edit questions once they are in your selected question section. To edit, just click on the part of the question box that you would like to change.
  4. To delete a question from your selected questions, simply click the "X" button to the right of your question.
  5. The last question block is left blank for you to freely add any questions of your own making. Once you are happy with what you’ve entered in the Prompt and Think sections, click the "+" to the right of the custom question box to add the question to your list.
*Note: that your progress will not save and if you select a new question set or reload the page, your custom questions will be lost

Step 3. Get Link to Send to Students

In this step you will produce a Crop-It Player link that you can share with students.

Directions:
  1. Click the "Generate Link" button to create a custom link for the Crop-It you created.
  2. Either click "Copy Crop-It Link" or select the link in the box and hit Ctrl+C/Cmd+C or right click and select "Copy".
  3. Share the link with your students!