Archive for September, 2009

The stand alone Picasa application from Google now recognizes who is in your pictures and groups all the pictures based on this information.  The web version of Picasa has had this feature for at least a year.  I blogged about it last September.

I just installed the update and it’s only about 2% complete with the initial “face” scan.  I have 92,000 pictures, so it will probably take all night to go through them.

As the program identifies new faces, a new icon is added to the “scanned pictures” group.  Type a new name under one of these pictures and Picasa begins to group other pictures of this person under the same name.  If the program is unsure of a picture (some of my kids look like each other) the pictures have a “check” and “X” under them so they can be easily added or removed from a group.  If there is a large number of picture you wish to move to another group, the click-shift-click method will highlight a large number of photos.  A context sensitive right-click offers options on re-assigning the pictures to another group.

I see some useful applications for this already.  I have photos of every freshman who has taken my edtech class for the last four years.  I could build a database of these students and then as other people in the college take photographs, we could sort them by person.  Wouldn’t it be great if every senior could be given a personalized set of photos showing all the major events of a college education?  I think we are getting close.

In fifth grade I memorized the capitals of all fifty states. It took a while, and I got 100% on the test. To my knowledge that information has not helped me one single time since fifth grade. Fortunately I have Google today and any time I need to know some tidbit of trivia (sorry South Dakota) it takes about two seconds.

But how do I find the answers to more difficult questions? I am talking about the kinds of questions I am more likely to get.

Who is this?

I put together a search activity for my class. How many of these can you find?

How many can you find in two seconds?

What is the significance of this formula?

It looks like a circle with a line across the top and the bottom. What is the significance of the logo on the green shirt of the guy standing on the left side of this picture?

What is this substance?

The picture below is a movie poster. According to the poster, what is the main topic of the movie?

What is the name of this painting?

The pictures below are of the same tree. What kind of tree is it?

I saw this video posted on Wes Fryer’s blog. I’m requiring my students (who have been creating online Positive Digital Footprint resources) to watch it.

I saw these videos on Garr Reynolds’ web site. If you have liked the original “Did You Know” videos, you will definitely like these.