When you first access Froogle – http://froogle.google.com – it will show you the most recent items that they have found for other users. You can type an item you are looking for and it opens with categories for you to view at the top of the page. You can set your price range, select the type of manufacturer, and even read comments posted by others about the product (or post your own). Once you find the items you like, you can price compare with other manufacturers and then generate your own shopping list. The site also provides you with places in your area where you can purchase the items you are searching.

Can you use this?

Picasa also has a built-in photo editor where you can remove fuzziness, red eye, and even crop pictures. When you have a folder of pics ready for a project you can make a screensaver, create a photo slide show, print your photos at home, send photos to Google Photo to be professionally printed, upload your pics to your Blogger site or to your Personal Google Home page, or you can create a CD of a picture slide show to share with family and friends.

All of this is for free. All of it is extremely easy to use!

Handout from today’s session: Google Earth, Froogle, Picasa Handout

This morning we went to the Nile River, we viewed Westlake from the satelite view, and we went to Area 51. I provided a handout that showed some ways teachers use Google Earth. These inlude measuring distances between places; viewing and zooming to particular places and/or their 3-D buildings on the terrain; Google Tours – which is a picture report created by the Google Global Community of the area. Another interesting thing is the fact that Google allows users to post their own comments about particular areas on the map and to comment on other areas using their free accounts. You could visit Paris, France and post comments to others who visit it online about tips for travel or other things.

With this in mind, some educators in the UK are creating online Google Tours where they are able to store data about their research on their own Google Earth type page you can visit and use in your classes.

I would use Google’s search engine to look for “Google Earth Lessons” to find out how other people are using it. Has anyone out there used it in their class or see a way to use it? Post your ideas here.

Google Earth Document - Click here to download the handout

I like Del.icio.us myself! This is what’s termed a “social network of bookmarks”. In other words, as I bookmark my favorite sites, Del.icio.us will check to see how many other people have bookmarked the same site and link us together so I can view their sites. Its pretty amazing to see how many people are sharing similar interests by the sites they pick. I can also see other sites in the same interest that they may recommend and add those to my favorites as well.

Both Del.icio.us and Notebook have the option to install a piece of software to your computer that attaches to your IE or Mozilla browser so you can click it on any site you find and it automatically adds the site to your favorites. Pretty cool!

http://del.icio.us

http://google.com/notebook

Let us know if you use these, visit these, or have plans to integrate this into your classes.

Thanks for the great workshop Joel!   We had several questions about the personalized Google Home page that we talked about a few weeks ago, so I wanted to post some specific instructions.

Go to Google.com.   In the top right corner, you’ll notice a link to Sign in.
If you don’t have a Google account, look on the bottom right where it says: Don’t have a Google Account?
Create an account now

Create your account.  I recommend using your school email so that you can have email alerts, etc, sent to you on campus.  (You can also create two different accounts, one for home, one for here.)

Go back to the main Google page.  In the top right corner, it now has a link to “Personalized home.”  Click there and you will see a new home page for Google with links, calendars, etc, on it.   To modify that page, use the link that says “Add stuff” which is on the right side of the screen.  You can select the items you want to display.

The Google account also allows you to use features like the Calendar, email alerts, Google Docs, Google Notebook, etc.   If you scroll down this blog to the previous posts here and here, I have links to all of those features.

If you think all this is too much, try Exalead, which is a new search site.  You can edit which websites show up on your search page and it takes about five seconds!

I wanted you to know that you should create a personalized account through Google so you can access all of these tools and manipulate your own settings. With Google Alerts, you can setup a directory of news items you wish to subscribe to. As these article subjects appear in the global news network, you will be emailed concerning the newest items. So now your topics of interest are emailed to you as soon as they are reported. Great tool for kids doing current events research.

Can you think of any other ways to use this?

Very cool stuff! Let us know if you tried to use this and what results you have found.

 Have you used this tool before? If so, how did it work and what did you use it for? If you attended this session, what did you think?