Blue Ribbon Reviews May 2005
By Linda Lindroth

Whether you're creating a scrapbook as a culminating activity to the school year or gathering your pictures from this year for a memory-filled cd to send home with students, my selection for this month's Editor's Choice is a perfect tool for these type of projects.

Picasa2
Picasa2 is a free software download from Google that puts you in control of all the pictures on your computer. Once you download the program from www.picasa.com and install it on your machine, you'll immediately be able to find, edit, and share all the pictures stored on your hard drive.

Organize. Every time you open Picasa2, the program automatically scans your hard drive, finds all the pictures stored there and sorts them by date into folders. Re-organizing pictures or creating new folders is a drag-and-drop procedure and pictures can be renamed with a simple click. You can label a group of pictures for easy access to e-mail your friends or create a slideshow. Every picture can be given a star rating – then, just use the star search to find all your quality pictures in seconds.

Edit. All the standard features are here – crop, fix color, enhance, remove red eye. Plus, 12 visual effects make it easy to create art effects that look professional. Change your photo to sepia, to black-and-white or click an area to "pop color" just on that picture area.

Add captions to your pictures that stay with the picture even if you export to the web, save to a cd or share them with colleagues or students. You can even zoom in, re-center or tilt a photo.

Share. Make a slideshow of a group of pictures and burn it to a cd to share or backup your favorite photos on a hard drive or to any flash memory card or stick. Picasa2 lets you e-mail photos to anyone – it even resizes them to make them easier to open. Hello instant picture chat makes it simple to share pictures. Sign up at www.hello.com

Create and Print. Picasa2 has features that let you print a photo in any size and put the pieces together after it prints. You can make posters, banners and special signs that will dazzle the PTA and the administration. A picture collage for the end of school is just a few clicks away. What a great tool for an end-of-year memory book!

Visit www.picasa.com to download your free copy. Windows only.

Phonics 3b
Phonics 3b, for ages 7-13, is just one of a series of phonics programs from HelpMe2Learn. The program is set up like an Olympic sports event, with a coach and a medal at the end of each lesson/event.

Gold Medal System. Students login and choose a Menu topic. Right/wrong answers are recorded and the student earns a medal based on his or her performance. A Button Bar makes navigation easy with Back, Menu for learning sections, Reset to start activity over, Medal Button with score and Help to repeat the verbal directions given at the start of each screen.

Each learning section contains Coach Time, Learn the Words/Speed Round and Metal Activity. Coach Time is perfect for whole class instruction to introduce or review a skill and helps if computer time is limited. The story-style skill lesson is captivating for learners and the questions offer a great assessment check for understanding.

Learn the Words is a game show format to review pronunciation, meaning, and spelling of words in each lesson. A 96-page pdf guide has printable pages for all the words and off computer reproducibles.

With Medal Activity, students choose a game or quiz to answer questions and earn a medal. All earned medals appear in the Student Management area, so teachers can track and print student progress.

For more information, be sure to visit www.helpme2learn.com or call 800-460-7001. Win/Mac cd-rom, $29.95.

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Linda K. Lindroth is Technology Editor and Web Coordinator for Teaching Pre K-8. She is also a Technology Resource Teacher in a K-5 computer lab in Lexington, KY.