I thought first I would review the SpanishPod to see what it was like. Not bad for an online option. Some information is too skimpy and too informal. It does offer dialogue, exercises, some cultural issues, false cognates and more. I still prefer attending a class like for French, the Alliance Francais.
For books, I was disappointed that the following did not make it. My daughter thinks it is a very good site.
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
This is what she wrote me, "The goal of project Gutenberg is to make available all books that haveentered the public domain. The start of the project was typing in theUS Declaration of Independence, and now includes such works as Beowulf, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Mark Twain, Jane Eyre,Oscar Wilde, Grimm's fairy tales, The Count of Monte Christo, and non-fiction works including Charles Darwin and Einstein. They are also working on archiving works in languages besides English, andarchiving video and sounds files.
Instead of SpanishPod, I have decided to revisit Picasa to check some of their "new" (to me) features. I created a slideshow of some of my favorite vacation pictures to imbed here. Some of it reminds me of the year we watched Lance Armstrong win his last Tour de France and then retire.
I like the many features Picasa offers. If I had all the time in the world, I would spend days becoming an expert Picasa user. I like the feature of saving to the web and creating a link for friends to view. Makes a much smaller email.
Other features?
-- Slideshows and movies
-- Star picture for visual stand out
-- Keep one picture in multiple albums
-- Add password to any Picasa collection
-- Edit
..crop, remove red eye, fix contrast & color, enhance digital picture,
..Go sepia, black&white or color, zoom & move focus, share (resize & attach),
-- post slideshow to own blog or multiple photos,
-- works with newest compact flash devices,
-- print at home or from an online company, burn CD/DVD for archive,
-- turn photos into movie clips,
-- make personalized desktop picture or screensave or screensaver rotation,
-- create a poster
-- make collages
I can see the students chronicling steps in a science experiment with pictures and then posting it in our class blog. This would make for a great project and many learning styles (visual, tactile, written....) and the incorporating of technology in our class material.
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2 comments:
I truly love Picasa! I have put family photos on with limited access and everyone loves it. There isn't the download time with e-mailed pics and you can look at as many or as few as you would like. If only I could convince my sister to use it instead of sending 68 pictures of my nephew's all-star baseball game in an e-mail...
I really enjoyed your review of Picasa--it was clear in describing the features. I am not a visual person so I don't take many pictures, but I've heard such good things about Picasa, I may need to start so I can upload and play in Picasa!
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