Using Picasa in Education

You can use Picasa Web Albums to add photos to your blog posts. You can also use Picasa to edit your photos. You can see here a before and after of one of my own photos. Picasa is available to download for free. Happy photo editing and sharing!

ITLS Post 3- Comparison

Blogger is very easy to use. It has good options for rich text and its not hard to set up your page design. It easily keeps track of your posts and traffic. It is also nice that it is just part of your Google account and so it meshes with most other things you are already doing. You also have the option of making it completely private. As a teacher you would not to make your blog private.
Tumblr is like a mix of blogger, pinterest, and instagram. People use it in so many different ways that sometimes I feel like its just a lot of chaos. The ability to repost other peoples posts is nice, but sometimes that ends up taking over the blog and the actual personal posts get lost. I wouldn't recommend it for educational use due to the fact that you just never know what could pop on on a news feed. It isn't filtered like Blogger.
I have a few friends that use Facebook Notes as a blog platform. One of the best things about Notes is that its incorporated right into Facebook. These posts are separated from your regular status updates and so they are set apart as something a little different than just a basic blurb. You have the option to make these posts public or private. Because it is on Facebook you can't do anything really fancy with it.
I feel that Blogger is the best of these options for educational purposes. It's simple, safe. and has a lot of capabilities.

ITLS Post 2- Best Practices

http://www.wikihow.com/Keep-Your-Blog-Safe

1. Keep information about yourself private. You should feel fine posting your name on a blog but you shouldnt be giving out your phone number, address, or even email address. If you post that information online it is out there for anyone to get and use.

2. Keep information about others private. This is especially important if you are in a school setting. You shouldn't be posting things about your students or co-workers that could be private information or simply information that doesn't need to be public.

3. Double check your post for safety. Review the post to make sure that any content or photos could be offensive or disrespectful if posted. Could anyone misinterpret what you are saying? You don't want to end up in a messy spot because of a simple blog post.

ITLS Post 1

I think it’s great that teachers and students are using blogs in education. In the few blogs that I looked at a few things stood out that seemed really useful. Teachers were able to post new and relevant information about a topic in a singular place where students could easily access it from anywhere. They would also be able to access it after they were finished with the course if necessary. Another neat part of getting the students involved is that they could follow each other’s blogs. They would be able to see what other students are doing in the class and their thoughts on things. Canvas is a great tool but it is very time limited. Once you are through with a class you might not be able to access some of the information that you may want to refer to in the future. I would use a blog to keep current students and past students up to date on important topics. It would be easy to get them involved in supplemental readings, especially since they would be current and up to date topics.

http://ben02.edublogs.org/

http://edutech4teachers.edublogs.org/

http://esheninger.blogspot.com/