Picasa and YouTube

This week we explored YouTube and Picasa.  As are most people I am fairly familiar with using YouTube in the classroom, but I was not aware of all the hidden features that YouTube has.  Here is a link to the hidden YouTube.  YouTube itself is not really all that complicated, but some of its hidden features can be.  The above site does a pretty good job of explaining how to use many of these features.  We also used a website called Tube Snack.  This site allows you to create a playlist using YouTube videos.  Here is a link to a playlist that I made for Alternative Energy Sources.

Picasa is another piece of software from Google that is an image organizer and image viewer.  I had never heard of this software before, but I found it to be very easy to use.  You can download Picasa here.  With Picasa you are able to edit and retouch your photos.  You can also use it to create a photo collage, like the one that I made for my Alternative Energy Sources Unit.

Here is a link to Google’s Picasa Help page and a YouTube video:

Picasa also allows you to create albums and share them through Picasa Web Albums.  One thing that I did not really like was that Picasa doesn’t show how to create a web album directly.  In the program you start a Web Album by clicking on “share”.  Here is a video that helps you create a Picasa Web Album:

Here is a link to a web album that I created using Picasa Web Albums.  For those of you that want to know more about Picasa here is a site that shows some of its hidden features.

All in all these are both tremendous resources for a teacher in the classroom.  I highly recommend looking into using them for your classroom.