Picassa

What: Google has many products, my opinions of them runs from excellent their search engine, maps, and images, to needs improvement, Google Docs and Presentations. This week I downloaded Google's Picassa. It is by far their best product. Picassa is a digital picture editing program. It is kind of like a scaled down, free version of Photo Shop. Did I mention it is free? There are two sides of the program one stores pictures on a computer hard drive and the other stores pictures on the internet. I have not worked with the web side much.

Now What? The uses for Google Picassa are limitless. I downloaded all my photos into the program. I was amazed at all the different effects I could do. I also used Picassa to email the digitals pictures we took in class to the other students on my 4^th Grade Rush team. With just the click of a button the picture were emailed. I did not have to attach and wait twenty minutes for an overloaded email to be sent. I also used the program to resize my photos, so they would fit in to our Google Presentation. As a student I am sure I will use this program a lot.

Another feature of Picassa I love was the photo collages. I could see this feature being used for so many different assignments. Like a photo scavenger hunt. Not to take pictures, but to find the item around school. Or use it to make a “what or where is this” quiz? When studying a state or country. The uses are innumerable for just this one feature.

Now What: There are many other features on Picassa and hundreds ways I could use them in a classroom. The program gives me the ability to write on my photos. I could use this for memorization. When the class needs to remember a poem, I would take a picture that goes along with it. Then write the poem on the photo. This could help the more visual learns. Also it will help the student understand the meaning of the poem.

Picassa did this strange thing, all by itself, that I could use in so many ways. It took all of my pictures and gave me head only shots of everyone. This would be great for first day of school. I could take pictures of all the students and use the close–ups for name tags. This would help me and the children learn everyone’s names. Picassa has so many uses I could go on for days, but I know I will be using it in the future in my home and school life.

Video: Death by Power Point it is called. Doing too much or too little can make you look silly and stupid in front of a large group. Too many slides and the audience will get bored and start throwing things at you. Too few and you won’t get you point across. I have made and seen many a Power Point in my days as a student. I think people assume they look smart just because they have put their information onto a slide show. This is only true if you know how to correctly use the program.