Picassa 3.0 Part 2

What: This week I will go over more uses for Google's Picassa 3.0. When I'm done I will have barely scratched the surface of the possibilities of photo editing with Picassa.

Now What: The first time I heard about Picassa was when friend of mine took professional like photo of my daughter for her Baptism. She used the program to edit the picture before she gave them to me. The pictures were beautiful and not just because they were of my little girl. My friend had turned some black and white, other were sepia toned. She also tinted a few and made a collage that she framed as a special gift. She was able to high light the most important parts of the photo, all using the free, Picassa 3.0.

In the last week I found so many more uses for the digital photo editing program. My son and daughter needed to make books for a literature fair. We used Picassa to edit photos for illustrate the books. My son book was a picture book about a buffalo, so we went and took picture of buffalo that live near our house. Then we took them and were able to write on one to make the title page for the book. The ability to write on my photos is one of my favorite features of Picassa 3.0. We also use the Saturate Effects in Picassa to add color to the photos. This green-up the dead grass under the Buffalos and added interest and texture to the pictures. I was also about to Soft Focus a picture of my son. This was the eye would be drawn only to him and not the busy background. With all of the effects and coloring tools the possibilities are endless.

So what: As I said last week the program is free. And free is a very good thing for a poor student or teacher. The more useful items I can get for free or cheaply the better. With Picassa it isn’t a matter of getting what you pay for. Picassa 3.0 is a wonderful, user friendly program that I will use in my future classroom. Another thing I can use Picassa for is to send Picture to Blogger of use in my 4^th Grade Rush blog. The ability to store and retrieve my photos online is something that will come in handy when I become a teacher.

For all the nice things I’ve said about the program you would think that it is perfect. There were however a few problems with it. Such as, it downloaded every picture from my computer’s hard drive including those for the game Zuma. I don’t think I need to edit pictures of a cartoon, stone frog. Picassa also load duplicate photos even though I told it not to. This might just be me getting use to the program. All in all I would recommend Picassa to anyone who owns a digital camera.

Video: I understand what they are saying. We as future teachers need to think globally. We need to implement new technology into our classroom to complete with an ever changing world. Children today are use to instantly getting ever thing they want. How can teachers keep up the Ipods, Iphones, Ipads, Itv and all the other gadgets Apple has invented. Maybe we should have them teach the children. Oh wait they are trying with Podcasts. Maybe if we can't beat we could use some of the technology in the classroom. By thinking creatively we can bring our classroom into the twenty-first century.