Flickr and Using DIgital Images in your Classroom

[Cyndi Danner-Kuhn]

Teachers From the Trenches
How do you use Digital Images in your classroom?

TECS 290 students
Share the Flickr Photo project your created, tell us what you think about Flickr and how you think you might use it in your own classroom someday.

[Sue R.]

There are soooo many ways! This topic is so broad, it's daunting. I'll mention a couple of the things I do with digital images that come to mind quickly:

I really like this lesson: I have middle schoolers contemplate and write about times when they felt invisible, or like they stood out, and then drop themselves out of a picture

or put themselves in with alien-coloration, to go with the essay. I blogged about it here: http://bookwyrmish.edublogs.org/2006/12/05/keeping-students-visible...
To sensitize students to their power, and hopefully to increase their sensitivity, before they go on a field trip to observe and photograph the under-regarded people in our community I would use this:
On Flikr (where you can spend way too much time) is Swamibu's collection. http://www.flickr.com/photos/swamibu/ He is captioning his photos from his wide and multicultural travels with more information than the average tourguide would give--I let my students view some of his collection to see how effectively he uses the communication. They've learned about mosques, tiger sanctuaries, and muslim marriage traditions. Then, I point out to my students that he is not a professional photographer, and we view his description of himself to determine his purpose, and his artistic ethic.

...Then we view Ansel Adams and read his explanation of what he thought "art" and its purpose was (this lesson plan page links to some good pictures and quotes him about this work: http://www.hctc.commnet.edu/artmuseum/anseladams/lessonplans/lesson... ). The controversy over the fact that Ansel Adams did not photograph the misery of the interned Japanese Americans at the Manzanar internment camp, and instead documented their courage and ability to rise above their desolate situation, is a perfect way to get middle schoolers thinking about what they are doing "to" and "for" their subjects before they take a digital camera out to document the "invisible" people in town.

My blog has another blurb (not a lesson plan, sorry) about using "information graphics" to quickly get a point across, instead of using a regular pie chart or graph. It's another lesson where students learn the power to communicate with an image that they've manipulated. My students are all drawn to using digital images,and really enjoy creating posters. There are images there: http://bookwyrmish.edublogs.org/2007/05/13/making-your-point-visually/

[Cyndi Danner-Kuhn]

WOW, thanks for the great resources, will have to add them to this lesson next semester. Thank you!!!

[Denise Dolechek]

Wow, that is a jaw-dropping idea. Great Job!

[Ryan Meng]

Granted, summer is not even half over but here is my Flickr project on my family's 2007 summer: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rjmeng/. Just open the link and click on Meng Family Summer 2007...

The possibilities are endless with Flickr. I think it is a great resource for teachers, students, parents, and families. However, I do think that some precautions must be taken, just as there are with sites such as MySpace, Facebook, etc. Students must know how to use site such as these responsibly and in order to do this, responsible use must be modeled. The vast majority of our students will not learn these things from parents, so who does that leave? Yep, the teachers.

I can envision myself using Flickr in so many ways in the classroom. An obvious project that would introduce Flickr and it's features is a "My Summer Vacation" project for any age. It is a very simple concept and students who may not have access to a digital camera and search Flickr for photos similar to what they did over the summer. In my Flickr project, I included to photos of the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City. I did not take any pictures when I went here for a conference in June so I searched on Flickr and added them to my project. Very easy!

[Alice Mercer]

I just used Flickr to store and put pictures on our class blog -- http://nicholasfifth.edublogs.org. You can see them in the left hand column. This was often the first thing that students wanted to look at when they went on the web, so the engagement factor was high, and helped build our classroom community.

Because it's been around as the source for photo storage, Flickr has a well-developed library of plug-ins off it's API. Here is a list of fun things: http://www.flickrbits.com/ Just for fun, here is a pretty color wheel color picker someone did: color pickr. You could use it to illustrate color theory?

The problem with Flickr is that you max out on storage quickly (at least I did) with a 200 photo limit for free accounts. I did a training on Picasa, and will likely be switching over to that since it has a higher storage limit at 1024 mb

[Kayla Krinhop]

I chose to do my Flickr Photo project on basketball, you can view it at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kmkrinhop/ just click on Basketball. I really enjoyed exploring Flickr, I love to take and look at all kinds of photo's! It was easy to use and there were videos to help me if I couldn't figure soemthing out! It's great, I can put all my photo's in one place! I also enjoyed the picnik photo site, both will be very useful to me in the future! I would use Flickr in my future classroom if we were doing a big project and I wanted to make a slide show to show their parents. I could also use Flickr to create slide shows that fit in with a lesson plan, there are all sorts of things I could use Flickr for in my future classroom and the best part of all it's FREE!!

[Vicki Schmidt]

My Flickr slideshow is at http://www.flickr.com/photos/vickis/sets/72157600661486628/show/

I was not familiar with Flickr at all except for having heard the name mentioned. I wondered if it was another Snapfish, Winkflash type site but was pleased to discover it was more of a photo sharing community. It would be a great resource to find visuals for powerpoint presentations. I created a counting picture book in Flickr using photos I took of various objects. I was pleased with the results.

[Eryn Norton]

I too was a little skeptical when it came to using Flickr. I knew if it was like Snapfish I wouldn't like it but this is a great way to share photos! I like that it was easy to sign up for this service and easy to use. I think using Flickr in a geology classroom would be great! You can find lots of pictures of different areas with exposed rocks to analyze. I have created a short slideshow on basic geometric shapes. One of the teachers I had the pleasure of working with used this activity but wrote out each definition as they were going. I think it would be more beneficial to have all of the definitions written out in advance. http://www.flickr.com/photos/9648879@N04/sets/72157600663335675/show/

[Melissa Beyer]

Here is my Flickr slideshow http://www.flickr.com/photos/9753552@N06/show/

It is of my dog Marley who is a spoiled brat and it is really sad I have so many pictures of him, but this gave me a chance to organize all of them.

This was the first time I had ever heard of Flikr. I could see myself using this is the classroom. I think it would be really fun to capture your students and the classroom throughout the year. Capture students working together or seperatly. Show the finished projects and the preperation. Then throughout the year keep the Flickr pictures updated so that the students and parents can view the work going on. I think it would create some great memories from the school year. You could also make presentations for the classroom. You can create slideshows for just about any lesson. I really liked the idea of using this for Geometry. You can take pictures of different objects and shapes and present them geometically. Overall, I think this is a useful tool!

[Catelyn Manly]

You can go to this link, and then click on "View as Slideshow"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9790695@N06/sets/72157600702648756/

or you can go to this link http://www.flickr.com/photos/9790695@N06/sets/72157600702648756/show/
and it should take you straight to the slideshow.

[Fred Griffith]

Okay, I hink I finally have this together!

I have created a Flickr account at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/computertutor/

This first set includes photos from the school in which I was teaching Business Technology (until they dropped all computer courses at the high school level...) I have some pictures of kids at work, of the school, of the logo I used for my classroom, etc. Please let me know what you think!

I am not sure yet if I would be able to use Flickr in the classroom yet. I am not sure whether the entire site might get blocked by BESS... If it can be accessed, I can envision many of my students using it as a site to store images they are going to use in a podcast, a PowerPoint presentation, etc.

We'll see!

[Cory Triplett]

I like Flickr because you can upload and share pictures as well as see some peoples amazing photos. I made a slideshow about the Color Wheel, and I plan on using this in my future classes. Here is the link.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/catriplett/sets/72157600709340586/show/

Remember to click on the first image to get my captions, it probably won't make much sense without them!