Thing 4 - Explore and Learn about Photo Sharing

Photo sharing websites have been around since the '90s and Picasa Web Albums is just one of these kinds of sites that can be found online. Picasa allows users to freely upload and store photos online to share with anyone or just a select few, like family and friends. Picasa Web Albums allows you to use your shiny new Google Account to upload and store up to 1 GB worth of pictures.  That's enough space to store about 4,000 standard resolution photos. If you find photos you like while searching Picasa Web Albums, you can download them, email them to others, and even order them as prints. You can also create a slideshow of your photos to embed within your blog.

Let's a watch Online Photo Sharing in Plain English for a couple minutes



Now, lets watch a video clip from the book "Brain Rules" about how important images are to our teaching and learning:




Now, lets look go back to Picasa - again it comes with your brand new Google account, and allows you to store pictures online.

Picasa also allows users to “tag” photos with common words that describe the photos. As the video below shows, users can search for other photos that share the same tags as their own or they can sort their photos using one or more tags. Users can "geotag" a photos, inserting latitude and longitude coordinates of where the photo was taken, in order to show the photo's location on a map. Picasa users can also use "name tags" to tag the people that are in their photos:

Task Resources:
First read about the features of Picasa Web Albums. Also read the "What's new" section and blog in Picasa Web Albums.   If you're interested in exploring other photo hosting sites, check out Microsoft Live Photos, Photobucket, Flickr, SmugMug or Zoomr.

Task:
Reflect on how you might use a photo sharing sites and other related photo resources in your teaching and learning.   Remember to title your blog post, "Thing 4 - Photo Sharing".

PS: A quick word about photo posting etiquette - When posting identifiable photos of other people (especially minors) is it advisable to get the person’s permission before posting their photo in a publicly accessible place like Picasa or Flickr. Never upload pictures that weren’t taken by you (unless you have the photographer’s consent) and always give credit when you include photos taken by someone else in your blog.