Picasa

Picasa is a free photo organization and editing tool from Google, and for a free program, it really has a lot to offer. Picasa is desktop software that runs on Windows, and it can be downloaded from the web. After you install Picasa, it asks you if you'd like to scan your entire computer or if you'd like to scan just the desktop, my photos, and my documents folders. I'd really suggest restricting your search to just those folders, unless you've got more than one hard drive or you've been storing photos in odd locations. You can also import photos directly from a digital camera, which is a handy way to keep them organized from the start. Overall, the effects are pretty advanced for a free software program. You don't get as much control as you would in an advanced photo-editing package like Adobe Photoshop, of course, but the options and controls for photo editing are still really nice.

I'm really impressed with the newest version of Picasa. I've used Picasa for years and the earlier versions often were slow and took up a lot of vitual memory. The newest version runs a great deal faster.

I plan to use Picasa in the classroom, using the album options to show in graphic form the characters, settings, and contexts of books students are reading.