Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Flickr - Who Knew?!?!?



I am learning a lot about tools online that I have only glimpsed at in the past. Like the Delicious account that I have recently been awoken too, Flickr has the same idea but with photos. You are able to save the photos and present them publicly or keep them private. I was unaware of the tagging ability that Flickr offered and this would be helpful for collecting photos that are needed on the go. (I like to use all my own photos when it comes to creating any materials for my classes - blogs, websites, etc.) Flickr would be a great help with collecting all my random pictures and organizing them online. Since I have way too may pictures already I think that I may get started on using Flickr to save and share my personal pictures.

When reading "7 things you should know about Flickr," I discovered that with private groups on Flickr a class could upload personal pictures that related to the subject matter at hand. This would be a useful tool with young students because I would always ask the students to look for the letters, numbers, shapes, etc at home and bring in a list of places you saw them. By taking photos and posting them on Flickr we would have a great visual of how letters, numbers, shapes, etc are all around us. I know one science lesson was on wood and students were supposed to bring in a list of the items at home made of wood. For kindergarten students it was hard to write the words and parents would write for them, but with photo sharing, the students could take pictures, post them for sharing, and comment on classmates photos. This could also lead into a presentation to the class and help to prepare students for speaking to groups of people.

Flickr is a way for students to bring their world outside of school, into to school and share with their classmates. Photo sharing our communities can be used in all subject matter. This I believe would be a great tool for the classroom, as long as boundaries are set and respect is given.

While reading Will Richardson's book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, I discovered even more ways to use Flickr in the classroom. With the ability to upload pictures in real time of students work, field trips, guests in the class etc, parents are able to keep track of what is going on in their child's classroom. If parents are a part of the Flickr private community, they would be able to upload pictures for their children to see in the classroom of anything cool and exciting that they are doing with work. If some of the photos went public, students would ahve the chance to see what the world thinks about their work. The possibilities are endless!


Reference:

Educase Learning Initiative. (2008). 7 Things you Should Know About... Flickr. Retrieved May 19, 2014 from https://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7034.pdf

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

3 comments:

  1. I like your idea of taking pictures at home for homework assignments. I teach first grade and this would be a great way to do a homework assignment on shapes. The students need to think of different things at home that are 3-D shapes. If they were able to take a picture of these things and download them on Flickr the students would have a visual of 3-D shapes in the real world. Great idea

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  2. Today, I found myself wishing all my students had iPads and Flickr accounts. We were taking a walk outside looking for monocots, dicots, conifers, and seedless plants. My students were drawing what they were finding, but how much more fun would it be to instead take pictures of the different plant categories, upload them, and tag them accordingly?

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  3. I really liked your ideas on how you would use flickr in the classroom. It would be a great tool for kindergarten since they are still developing their writing skills.

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