Photosharing

As an educational tool, Picasa—in addition to showing itself to be a wonderful picture organization and display tool—proves itself to be another nice tool for students to present or show their learning. The “photo collage” and the “movie presentation” features both allow for the easy and seamless creation of a visual element that would complement almost any presentation or research project. What used to be the poster bird picture collage, or the hard-worked-for Windows Movie Maker show, now becomes the Picasa-created presentation (show it any way you want to—just the click of a button makes all the difference).

As a library technology, Picasa would certainly be a valuable tool for advertising the library—I haven’t seen an easier way to take simple pictures and create an attractive collage or video. Imagine: collect some great shots of your library, create a collage, and set it as your library computer desktop backgrounds. Print off the same collage on paper and post it wherever you want to (perhaps with your library’s own logo?) for extra library “visibility” around the school. Utilize the “movie presentation” feature to make a quick and easy movie featuring the library and the people who frequent it and present the collage on an easy-to-see computer monitor throughout the day. This could be a once-a-term type of presentation as well as an end-of-year presentation.