Teacher Resources : Accessing Online Tools

Accessing Online Tools

There are several steps you should take to prepare for developing your Goowi Explorer’s project.

Creating a Google Account

Google applications work well for managing a GooWi Explorers project. Applications that you may want to use include:

• Gmail – project email account.
• Picasa Web Albums – manage project images and link to images in your Wiki web pages and Google Earth balloons.
• Picnik image editing – edit images you have uploaded to Picasa Web Albums.
• Picasa Desktop – create screen captures of images from online articles and upload the images to Picasa Web Albums.
• Google Docs – manage Word and PDF documents for your project.
• YouTube – upload and edit videos.
• Google Earth – explore and display geographic information

A Google account allows you to use the same user name and password for all of these applications. To set up a Google account, create a Gmail account by searching for Gmail in your web browser.

1. Press the Gmail: Email from Google link (www.mail.google.com/).

• Gmail: www.mail.google.com/
• Picasa Web Albums: www.picasa.google.com/
• YouTube: www.youtube.com/
• Google Docs: www.docs.google.com/
• Picnik: www.picnik.com/ Note: You can access Picnik through your Picasa Web Albums account.

Downloading Picasa Desktop

Download Picasa Desktop to your computer to create screen captures and manage and edit images on your computer. Picasa Desktop also allows you to upload images from your computer to your Picasa Web Albums.
1. Navigate to www.picasa.google.com.
2. Press the Download Picasa button.



3. Launch Picasa Desktop on your computer.
4. Click the Sign In to Web Albums link and enter your Google login ID and password.



To learn more about using these applications, please see GooWi Explorers Tutorials at (web address or wiki link here).

Downloading Google Earth

To download the latest free version of Google Earth, go to:
http://www.google.com/earth/download/ge/agree.html