Google Picasa

For this assignment, I looked at Google Picasa which is a free photo and web-album sharing and editing application that gives it's users 1024 MB (4,000 wallpaper-sized photos) of storage space and offers the following:

• Web albums that will even show your pictures arranged on a global map.
• Organization by people or faces with it's built-in face matching technology, name-tagging ability, as well as ability to geotag your photos using Google maps.
• The ability to edit, crop, order or print photos at home as well as create slideshows, or add your favorite photos to YouTube or to a desktop background or screensaver.
• Upload photos to "collaborative albums" by adding contributors to your page, do advanced searches, or follow friends' photos when marked as a "favorite."
• Automatic comment translations for those comments that you may receive from others around the world that may speak a different language.
• Mobile phone compatibility allowing you to add photos or comment on friends' photos anytime and from anywhere all from your mobile phone.
  

After creating an account and experimenting with Picasa's features, I believe students who have some background knowledge with photo editing would have a pretty easy time using this application. The navigation bars and pull-down menus are easy to access and understand and with the ability to share and even collaborate on photos or projects with others, the possibilities are endless with regards to what one could create.

Because this is a web-based application, great care needs to be taken with monitoring students' activity while on Picasa. Leaving a web-based application and venturing off into inappropriate or unsafe sites or material is always a possibility and must be considered heavily when using such an application. However, the positive aspects of such an opportunity to share photos and comments on class projects and activities, or even geolocate student pictures from family vacations in order to learn more about their world and their communities are all vastly important concepts, and these benefits simply should not be overlooked. Ultimately, Google Picasa is a worthwhile application with some worthy benefits to 21st century teaching and learning.

Wiki's

I was able to locate my school district on Wikipedia as well as my school. I added new information about our school becoming "Prairie Wind Elementary" when we open our new building in the fall of 2010. (See the screenshot at the bottom of this page.)

I also created a Wikispace account at http://tlcarlson.wikispaces.com

Blogs In The Classroom

When using blogs in the classroom, the constructivist approach to teaching or the idea-based approach to teaching would facilitate the best results with blogging while a teacher-centered approach would likely not have a positive or useful effect from blogging in the classroom. Blogs are meant to be collaborative in nature, customized, as well as social, and these ideas are supported by both the constructivist approach as well as the idea-based approach to teaching and learning. Teaching that is directed and controlled by the teacher such as in a teacher-centered approach, does not elicit enough freedom to students in order for them to be creative or functional enough to be as successful with blogging.

When considering a way to adapt a Web 2.0 tool to meet a need that it doesn't necessarily address (e.g. using a blog to help students learn their math facts) I thought about perhaps allowing students to blog about their successes and difficulties with the subject matter that they are struggling with in an effort to connect and learn from others who may share similar trials and tribulations. After all, blogging is collaborative and social, so if learning a new way to try something is all it takes to master or even gain some needed confidence with a concept, then ultimately the Web 2.0 was successful even when at first it didn't appear to have any relevance.