Picasa

This week in class we were instructed to find pictures and practice using Picasa to edit, improve, or alter them. I did both of my video reflections last week so there is no video this week.
I can't even begin to describe how excited I was to discover the possibilities Picasa holds. I love editing my pictures and I had actually been debating about purchasing Photoshop. A big reason I hadn't made this purchase yet is because of the cost. I love the fact that Picasa is free through Google. I can definitely see the ways this program could be extremely useful and valuable for a teacher.
My favorite part of using Picasa was exploring the numerous options for editing your photos. I loved all the color options such as saturation, sepia, black and white, and also "popping" a specific color. Many of the pictures I take are on my phone and are therefore not the best quality. Picasa allows you to upload pictures from any device and fix the grain/pixel quality of that photo. It's nice to know that even though you aren't able to take a picture with a high quality camera or in the best setting, you can still fix it to be a great picture.
I also enjoyed the organization options of Picasa. You can sort your photos into folders by event, season, or even who is in that photo. I love that you are able to tag the pictures because it makes it so much easier to search for a particular picture without having to go through every folder to find it.
I love discussing the uses of Picasa for teachers in class. My favorite idea was using this program to store pictures of your students in order to learn their names more quickly. I also think it would be a great option to have those pictures on hand in case you needed them for an art project or something along those lines. If you were teaching in the upper elementary grades, I think it would be fun to introduce the use of Picasa to your students. With the technology of computers and cameras becoming more prominent, it could be a fun project for students to begin learning about these programs at a young age.