ThinkFree
I had no idea that a program like ThinkFree ever existed. I was amazed at how much the program resembles Microsoft Word. It took me only about five minutes to set up an account. All I needed to enter was an email address and password. In order to activate the account, I had to open a special email from ThinkFree and click on a link which then activated my account. Overall, not only is the set up very simple, but the program itself is overall very simple and easy to navigate. The only minor issue that I encountered was the time that it took for me to create a new document. It took approximately 2 minutes for the page to open where I could create a new word document. Saving took approximately the same amount of time. However, the tradeoff between the amount of money one would pay for Microsoft Office and the little extra time it takes to create and save new documents seems well worth it.
Not only can you create and save documents on and to the web, but you can also share your work with others. This opens up a whole new world for group work and collaboration. I can see this feature coming in handy if students were ill and had to miss school, or if they were unable to meet to do a group project outside of class. This feature could also work well in the English classroom- especially in creative writing where publishing and celebrating work is a natural part of the writing process.
Overall, I think that ThinkFree would be an excellent tool to incorporate into the school system. Not only is it free and easy to use, but it allows students, teachers and the community to view and comment on student work. The only drawback seems to be the little bit of extra time needed to create and save documents, but this seems like a minor issue in the whole scheme of things. The only other minor issue involves the idea that if students only save documents to the web, then they must have Internet access to retrieve them. Therefore, I would have students save in multiple locations if possible. Overall, it’s a wonderful application!
Picnik
Again, I had no idea that a program resembling PhotoShop was on the web free of charge to users for the basic package! Wow. What a great program. It took me only about 2 minutes to set up an account. All that was required was a username and password and in an instant, one was created for me. In less than five minutes, I had easily uploaded a photo and began editing it with no problem. Again, the features are extremely user friendly and easy to find. With the different buttons offered by the program, I was able to not only “auto-correct”, but also to manually correct the photo using features like, rotate, sharpen, color adjust warm, color adjust cool, red eye, etc. This software reminded me of the photo kiosks that are in major shopping centers like Meijer and Wallmart.
In addition to editing with Picnik, one can easily share their work by emailing to a friend. I emailed a photo of our daughter to my fiancée. It arrived immediately in his inbox and we were able to view the edited version of it on his computer. In this sense, it is much easier than photoshop because the program does the emailing for you. Once you have edited the photo and saved it, you don’t have to open different software in order to email, etc. You are already online and can do it right from Picnik. The application also offered links to Twitter and Facebook for easy sharing, among other programs.
Because of the fact that the program is free, easy to use and allows photo sharing and collaboration, I would highly recommend this application for use in the schools. While it is not a “professional” photo editing suite and thus may not be appropriate for yearbook, etc., it gets the job done for other simple projects and student assignments, and could be a useful tool for teachers to use in communicating photos with parents and the greater community. Based on what I experienced overall from the application, I would suggest it to anyone interested in basic photo-editing, sharing and printing.
I have included a photo that I edited using Picnik. What do you think?!
