This article is second part of Picasa tutorials. You may be interested in reading article Screencast: Google Picasa Overview

In this screencast you are learning how to:

• Use Picasa to upload Pictures to Google’s Picasa Web Albums
• Upload pictures in Picasa Web Albums environment
• Organize pictures in Picasa Web Albums

This screencast is about using Picasa to upload photos to Google Picasa Web Albums. We activate Picasa Web Albums account, upload some photos with Picasa, upload some photos in Picasa Web Albums environment and organize them. At last we look how Picasa Web Albums look for visitors.

Screencast: Google Picasa Web Albums

Easy to use

Adding events is really simple – just click on starting time of event and drag to end time of event and enter event name. Events are shown as boxes from beginning time to end time. To change duration of event you can make event box bigger by dragging. You can move event to different weekday or different time by dragging event box.

Different views

You can switch between different views of events:

• Day view
• Month view
• Week view
• Next 4 days view
• Agenda view (list of events)

Screencast: Google Calendar Overview

Top 5 Screencasts

1. Screencast: Word 2007 User Interface Overview
2. Screencast: Netvibes tutorial
3. Screencast: Google Picasa Overview
4. Screencast: del.icio.us social bookmarking
5. Screencast: Moodle

Picasa is free software from Google that helps you:

• Locate and organize all the photos on your computer.
• Edit and add effects to your photos with a few simple clicks.
• Share your photos with others through email, prints and on the web: it’s fast, easy and free.

Picasa automatically scans your photos and organizes them chronologically and by folders. You can make virtual albums without copying files physically so you can save disk space. You can view files with slideshow or with graphical timeline. You can also make Picasa photo CD to share it with friends.

Picasa offers easy to use image fixing tools: You can adjust brightness, contrast, remove red eyes, etc… There are also 12 effects for applying to pictures. Picasa differs from other photo editing programs that it never changes original photos, so should not worry about originals. Fixes that are made in Picasa are visible only in Picasa and you can undo fixes at any time. To make fixes visible to other programs you can export them any time.

With Picasa you can share your photos by e-mail, Picasa Web Albums web service, post them to blog or order prints to share photos physically. There are much more features in Picasa that will be described later in Learning by Screencast, so stay tuned through RSS .

Screencast: Google Picasa Overview

With Del.icio.us you can easily bookmark web-pages which you can easily access later. Del.icio.us is web-based service so you can use it from any computer with internet-connection and web-browser.

When you save bookmark you can enter space separated words (called tags) that are best describing bookmarked page so you can easily find them later.

Del.icio.us also makes list of popular tags and bookmarks that many users have been saved recently so you can see what is going on and what is popular now.

You can also share your bookmarks with friends and create network of your friends bookmarks.

This screencast below shows how to start using del.icio.us social bookmarking.

Netvibes is free web 2.0 service that allows you to customize your personal desktop in web-browser. You can make ToDo lists, add bookmarks and insert notes. You can keep tracking on your favorite news sites and blogs through RSS-reader, upload and download files using Box.net service and much more…

Keep tracking on blog and news feeds

With Netvibes you can read all your blogs and news sites in one place instead of browsing them all with web-browser. Of course, you can use some feed reader clients to keep tracking on news, but if you have computer at home and at work and both have feed readers on it then you must manage feeds on both computers. With Netvibes you have always your feeds near you where you can access internet with computer. You can also compose several pages of del.icio.us feeds of your friends and other people with same interests.

File storage

Netvibes has interface to upload and download files using Box.net service. Box.net allows you to save up to 1GB files to their server for free and you can access them from any internet-connection computer.

ToDo lists and Webnotes

You can have several ToDo lists to keep tracking on things that should be done. You can easily drag activities in list and mark them done. I have four ToDo lists on my Netvibes page: Important things at work, less-important things at work, shopping list at work, and personal ToDo list.

When you browse web and you find some text useful, you can copy-paste it easily to Netvibes. Sometimes I make copy from important e-mails (or part of them) too, so I can easily access them.

E-mail

If you have several e-mail accounts and you are tired to check them periodically let Netvibes do that. You can add POP3/IMAP4 accounts to Netvibes. Google Gmail and Yahoo! Mail are also supported.

Conclusion

I have been used Netvibes for a half year and I’m satisfied with this service. My post-it notes on my monitor have been replaced with Netvibes Webnotes and ToDo lists and I can access them from any computer with internet-connection. I spend less time for reading news and blogs using Netvibes feed reader.

Netvibes Screencast

Moodle has a large and diverse user community with over 130,000 registered users on this site alone, speaking over 75 languages in over 160 countries.

Using Moodle is quite simple for pupils, but there are some things you must know to use Moodle effectively as an educator.

I found very useful screencast demonstrating how to use Moodle as learner and as educator:

• http://treadwell.cce.cornell.edu/moodle_doc/index.html

File for self-learning: Learning by screencast_columns.doc

File for self-learning: Learning by Screencast.doc