Google Photos

Why You Should Be Using Google Photos

I attended the Midwest Google Summit in Wisconsin Dells last week, and one of the sessions I went to was on Google Photos. I had seen the commercials, spent 5 minutes on the app, but never really felt like it was worth my time to go any further with it. You can upload files to Drive, so what is the point...

Well, I have seen the light. I am a user and a believer and I think if you give it a chance you will be too. I can see the benefits in both my personal life and in my classroom. Here is a list of a few reasons why I think everyone should be using Google Photos:

1) Unlimited Free Storage of Pictures and Video

I love good commercials, and Google Photos has a great one. It clearly illustrates what I know to be a real problem for some people (ahem...Jessica Bednarek). Google Photos offers free unlimited 'High Quality' photo storage. Every picture I take is with my phone or iPad, and the quality of my picture is unchanged. If you take pictures with a better camera and are really concerned with having the highest quality of photo, there is a paid option for you to store your photos or videos at their original quality. For 95% of us, the free is all you will need.

2) Automatic upload

When I take a picture or video with my phone, I have the option of having it sync directly to Google Photos. I don't have to go through another step of sending it to myself or uploading. Snap the shot and it's there!

3) Accessible on all devices

Take a picture on your phone but want it on your mac? How about iPad? Without Google Photos, it can be a little tricky (iCloud does it, but not as well on non-apple devices). Because Google Photos can be accessed from any connected device, you have access to your pictures anywhere, anytime. 

Just getting started...

4) Assistant feature

Google Photos has a feature called 'Assistant' which looks at your photos and creates little collages, animations, etc. for you that you can keep or discard. I had taken some pictures on a trip to San Diego and the 'Assistant' put them together to make a collage. I did nothing but click 'keep'. 

You can also create your own collages, animations (think of a flipbook of your photos....works well with burst shooting videos).

As a check to see who is reading, the first person from each building to write their favorite Thanksgiving dish in the comments section of this blog will receive a small prize!

5) Easily insert into Google apps

When you choose to insert an image into a google app (docs, etc.), you get a menu like this:

If you click on the "Your Albums" tab, it opens up all your photos stored in Google Photos. You can easily add them to your docs.

6) The search feature blows my mind.....

This is harder to tell you than to show you, but I will try my best to do it justice. If I type in 'car' in the search bar of my photos, Google pulls these photos up...

 Sure it pulled the obvious pictures of Jessica saying goodbye to her car. But how did it know to find the picture of Zoey and her friend playing with the toy car? Or Zoey/Yogi riding in the car? Or a firetruck? It is cut off, but there is a picture of Zoey playing on a pile of tires! 

Another search feature that I like is that you can search by face...

It isn't foolproof, but it's pretty darn good. You could do a search at the end of the year by each student's face and it would pull up all the pictures/videos that you took of that student!

7) The application to the classroom is endless...

An activity we did at the Google Summit was that we all had our own devices (iPhones, androids, macbooks, chromebooks....you name it, the device worked) and the presenter gave us 3 minutes to take 5 pictures of 'angles'. He shared an 'album' with us and all our pictures were uploaded to the album. In just a few minutes we had over 100 pictures of angles in our every day life, and we all had access to them. From there, you could have students group the pictures by category (obtuse,acute,right), etc. Think of the uses in science, art, literature, etc. We have all heard the importance of student creation and choice. Here is an easy way to house that. In addition, you can easily create a map to include with any of your albums. A student takes a trip? Have them share a few photos and attach a map. Doing a scavenger hunt? Have them plot where they took the picture on a map (it will tell you the city automatically, but a map can create a more detailed visual). 

Google Photos is a tool that can enhance your classroom and benefit your personal life. With the holiday season around the corner, you may want to consider using Google Photos to store your holiday memories. To get Google Photos, download the free app from the app store or visit photos.google.com.

Happy Thanksgiving and thanks for reading!