FLICKR AND PHOTOSHARING

REFLECTIONS

Flickr was not a totally new concept to me, although prior to this assignment, I had only used it to search for free photos, and even then, only two or three times. So, after I spent the first couple of hours cruising around in the site, I realized that Flickr was a lot more than a photo album!

Joining Flickr is easy, but it is powered by Yahoo!, so I had to create another e-mail. I was on my toes, so I remembered to send myself an e-mail at my regular address telling me my login and password. A couple of days after joining, I had to acess that e-mail. That is a minor inconvenience. Here is the link to my Flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tlw835/.

With the headings or menus all over the home page, it doesn't take long to find what you are looking for whether it's uploading photos, finding groups or exploring everyone's photos. One feature a person could easily miss is along the right hand column. I don't know what to call it because the title changes all the time. It's in pink print though, so it stands out. You will notice that there is a little refresh button under the pink writing. When I first noticed it, there was a post about mapping your photos, which was what I was trying to do at the time. As I looked back, the title was about finding friends. I started clicking on the refresh button and saw all kinds of helpful links. I kept clicking until I found the one that I wanted. A very useful tool, but I can see how it can be missed.

I clicked into the "You" tab at the top to create my profile which was a simple process. I played for a long time in Flickr. There are so many things you can do with it. I created a really simple slide show with photos of libraries that I found on the site and marked as favourites. By far the easiest slide show I've ever created. I uploaded pictures onto my account and organized them into a set, and I joined a couple of groups for people who love books and libraries.

In Will Richardson's book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, he made reference to a presentation by Alan Levine and gave the address http://tinyurl.com/2kly3j (p. 102) which linked me to an annotated image that showed many of Flickr's tools, annotating images being one of them. Each part of the picture that was annotated was linked to more information and instructions about how to use the tool. I was amazed and excited by the possibilities. I literally spent hours just trying them out, and they're all really easy to use. I geotagged a couple of my photos, annotated a photo, learned about a search interface called FlickLilli that allows you to search Creative Commons by topic rather than by license categories. I had the most trouble with tagging, which I actually did not do. Tagging is supposed to be a strength of Flickr according to Richardson as he notes, "But the real power of Flickr lies in the ways it can connect people around the world. Each photo that gets uploaded to Flickr can have "tags" or keywords associated with it by the publisher, and those tags are searchable (p. 103). That part made sense to me. The larger the tag, the more photos attached to it, but where I had trouble was looking at the tags for certain photos. The words chosen did not make sense to me a lot of the time. I couldn't figure out how these words related to the pictures. Julia Davies and Guy Merchant in their book Web 2.0 for Schools note that "...meanings jof images could be changed dramatically via the application of different titles, tags, and descriptions (p. 46). So I guess some of the tags are a result of looking at pictures in different ways. Tagging is a tool with which I must continue to practice.

My one complaint about Flickr is the length of time it took to upload the photos. Now here, I'm not sure if I am not to blame. My photos were all saved as jpegs; however, I did nothing with them in terms of converting their size prior to uploading. I did have Flickr define the size after I had uploaded them but that's because I didn't explore the preferences button before. Needless to say, I couldn't upload everything I wanted on the 100 MB monthly limit, but because this is something I'd been wanting to do for a long time, I paid the $24.95 US to create a pro account. I uploaded many of my wedding pictures that friends and families far away still haven't seen, and I then sent them invitations to have a look.

Flickr and Personal Learning

One new learning I really "got" from my exploration of Flickr was an understanding of Flickr as more than a photo searching site and its role as a social networking site. I joined three groups around libraries, books and teaching with Flickr. Reading in the book by Davies and Merchant as well as Richardson's book, it was clear that the strength of Flickr was in its ability to connect people with like interests. People can learn from each other, and discuss ideas, share photos or videos. This was really a new idea for me as I had viewed Flickr only as a place to access photos not on my clipboard!

I still have all my pictures in photo albums, even those recently developed. In fact, when I married in 2008, I spent a lot of money at Walmart making copies of pictures to send to friends and family. I had my wedding pictures on a disk, but the only thing I considered doing with them was printing them from the disk. It never occurred to me that there was a better way to share photos. Not only can I share them, but I can engage in conversation with people who view them. I like that I can control the safety settings and show my photos to only those with whom I wish to share.

Personally, Flickr will change the way I do a lot of things. I've always had a strange worry about losing all of my daughter's photos in a fire. I am going to scan my favourites and put them in Flickr where I know they will be safe (a benefit noted in the trailfire video). I don't know if I'll have pictures developed as often anymore. Another benefit of Flickr is that is saves space. No more bookshelves of dusty photo albums.


Flickr, Teaching and Learning

I'm quite excited to use Flickr in the classroom. I currently teach an ELA 20 class with two units: Recollection and Anticipation. In Web 2.0 for Schools, Davies and Merchant offer some suggestions about how teachers might use Flickr such as illustrating metaphors of their own or illusrating a poem (p. 49), and in my investigations in Flickr, I found other ideas such as Visual Storytelling (five images, no text) and the Six Word Story (one image, six words). I thought about having students think of one of our themes, like childhood, and create a visual or six word story.

Oddly enough, last week an EA supervising Grade 9 students making power point presentations asked me to come in as the substitue teacher couldn't answer the students' questions. I spent a few minutes troubleshooting and as I passed one boy who was putting a picture into his slide show, I asked him if he had cited it. He stared blankly as I told him that if he used someone else's picture, he needed to give credit for it. His reply was, "Why?" I did explain, but I also promptly e-mailed the teacher and explained that I would be happy to teach this important lesson to his students, so Flickr will be invaluable as a location for finding images they are allowed to use and learning how to cite them.

I attended a conference last year and heard Jamie McKenzie speak. In part of his presentation, he talked about the many different literacies, and specifically about visual literacy. I've included a link to his outline of the different literacies as well as to his home page. I think Flickr is a wonderful resource for teachers who are trying to teach visual literacy. I also joined a group on Flickr focussed on Visual Literacy on Flickr(http://www.flickr.com/groups/visual_literacy/). This group is dedicated to learning how to teach visual literacy to students. Some aspects are a little camera technical for me, but they present some good questions to ask students.

Another way in which I intend to use Flickr professionally is with our school's art teacher. A few days ago, she came to the library looking for slides. She is new to the art program after the previous teacher's retirement and was wondering if we had slides of the works of famous artists. I said I had never seen any slides and let her go. Well, after going through Flickr, I am just jumping to get back to her and throw a few ideas out about how we could use Flickr in art class. There are so many ways - again, to teach visual literacy, but so many effective and engaging uses for art students.

The map features on Flickr are another great feature. A person can look on a map and find photos all around the world from a particular location. How effective this would be in a Social Studies unit about cultures around the world? Real pictures from real people! Talk about engaging.

David Jakes has a list of uses for Flickr at http://jakespeak.blogspot.com/2006/03/classroom-uses-of-flickr.html. I've touched on some,but Flickr has endless possibilities and tools that can be used in the classroom to enhance learning, but there are so many more; limited only by the imagination of teachers and their students.

Flickr was a lot more interesting than I had initially thought it would be. I was surprised to learn about its many features and about its role as a social networking site. The fact that safety settings can be set by teachers is a bonus which will allow me to feel comfortable using the site and its many tools and resources with my classes.