On-line photosharing

Well, its time to crawl out of my shell. Just signed up for Flickr. It is almost as simple as described by Will Richardson in his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Just signed up for the basic, free account. It surely won't take too long to use up one's limit for either video or photo. My greatest concern will be whether the district policy on FOIP will allow my students to post materials to Flickr that may include their personally identifiable images of fellow students, etc. Even on our school website, we can't post pictures of students without permission and some of the photosharing sites may not be accessible due to internet filtering.

Anyways, I rant. If you would like to check out my handiwork, follow the link to my Flickr photostream and comment on whether it actually works. JPercyPage Flickr

I really do like the ability to mash together my images with a world map. That is powerful. I am still trying to figure out the concept of annotating pictures which was mentioned in the book by Will Richardson. I will continue to play with Flickr a bit more and will probably post some additional thoughts later this evening.




Came across a great little slideshow illustrating Web 2.0 for newbies!

Web2.0 Slideshare

Oh the fun of new discoveries!! What's next?

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And later that evening,

I've discovered that photosharing is like a swiss army knife -- it can do many things in one neat package. Reading from an exerpt from The British Computer Society, my eyes were opened to how photosharing can be utilized in almost every subject area. Geotagging, mapping, annotations can be applied collectively by a class of students to build something that can be a powerful instrument for learning for all subjects. It can become personalized by all and hopefully they can take ownership of their own learning. Check out this short youtube video on the evolving pedagogy for the 21st century. Teachers need to let go of some of the control that they have had historically over the student's learning.

The tools in Flickr are fairly straight forward but I seem to have hit a hurdle with allowing others access to view groups of photos. When I am in Flickr (signed in), my photos appear in my group section but when I link into the site from my blog, no photos appear? Perhaps I need to see it as another user (ie. sign in)?

Would I recommend/encourage the use of a photosharing site to my colleagues at school? Certainly. Many of the changes in the high school curriculums involve 21st century media and how the many of the tools that are now available are geared towards collaboration at work/school. The fact that many photosharing websites and their associated tools are free for our students to use either at home or at school means that the student can enjoy a seamless learning experience. Will my students and less techno-savy teachers that I work with just jump right in and work with the tools? No, not likely. Many students 'think' that they are computer literate but that usually means they can e-mail, browse, word process (a bit) and download music/video and/or play on-line games. Without meaningful projects and initial teacher guidance, photosharing will not realize its potential as an instructional technology worthy to be in the classroom.

So tell me what you think...