Flickr

For a more personal aspect to this project I chose to catelogue my hobbies using Flickr. I am an avid crafter and I have found this tool rather helpful for me to list and sort my images and also share them with others.

According to wikipedia, Flickr is an image hosting website that was created in 2004 and purchased by Yahoo in 2005. It is a popular site used for sharing images and is now widly used by bloggers to host images used for their blogs and social media. There are over 51 mililon registered members and is hosting over 6 billion images as of 2011.

First my time was spent finding and uploading my own photos. Initially I was not sure how Flickr would be a useful part of my online world until I started searching through the tools found on the Flickr site.

Galleries:

I first played with a gallery. Being a crafter of sometimes-considered outdated crafts, I am always excited to find others out there like me. I made a gallery about crochet. Flicker says a “gallery is for whatever you find interesting, fascinating or mind blowing on Flickr”. It is a way to celebrate the creativity of the other Flickr members in a unique way surrounding a theme or idea. I found this process a great way to encourage others to look through Flickr accounts and network with others.

Tagging:

Images in Flickr need to be tagged in order to be found by others. Initially I was rather disappointed no one had used my photos in their galleries or other networking ways, however until they are tagged it is fairly impossible for anyone to find them! I went through my photos and added tags that can be used for personal organization and also for others to find the images through searching.

Sets:

I began with a photostream of random photos all jumbled together. As I realized the use of sets I organized my photos based on their similarities. Sets are a method in which to classify your images 

Classroom: 

In the past, students would cut pictures out of National Geographic, Life and other magazines to illustrate reports. Now thanks to Flickr, students and teachers have the ability to search a vast and growing photo archive, using tags, or keywords.According to this Article from the Illinois Technology and Education Conference, the most obvious way to use Flickr in the classroom is to allow students to build on their visual literacy through exploring the images available to them through this tool.  Images can be used as writing prompts as students can choose and print a Flickr image to attach to their story, or use the images in a Livebinder recording of a story they have written. Students can locate the Geotags of photos and investigate the area in which the photos were taken, or virtual field trips could be possible through this site. The ideas in the classroom with Flickr are endless. In a grade 4 classroom, images and sets of student work would be a wonderful addition to a class Moodle site. For more creative classroom ideas and information see this site!

Bibliography:

Using Flickr in the Classroom: Illinois Technology and Education Conference. Available: http://www.jakesonline.org/flickrinclassroom.pdf