Educational Uses of Photosharing

I have found such great suggestions for using photosharing with students. Jackpot!

I had remembered reading an article earlier this semester written by Joyce Valenza called “Open the Door and Let ‘Em In” in our course text, Toward a 21st-Century School Library Media Program (2007) © The Scarecrow Press, Inc., and recalled that she had mentioned using Flickr in her school. I went back to this article and found what she and her students were doing with photosharing. Valenza states, “On the most basic level, librarians can easily create galleries of student art/work or document library activities using tools like Flickr. I asked several students to collaborate in creating a school clip art gallery” (p.184-185). Valenza included the link to these photos, and they can be seen here.

Of course, I leaned on Will Richardson’s expertise in Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms again; (I’m beginning to think of him as my Web 2.0 guru). Not only did he provide his suggestions for photosharing with students, but he also led me to others who have suggestions as well. First, I’ll start with what Richardson shares.

With photosharing, you can
- capture daily events and share them thereby celebrating the work that is being done
- leave comments on and invite others to have discussions about photos, which can be done simply by the class or with people from around the world
- annotate and describe photos, for example, “Imagine being able to annotate portions of a Civil War battlefield or a fetal pig dissection for students to access and view” (p.104)
- create personal, organized albums that can be an online portfolio of work
- learn proper use of copyright, through the Creative Commons section
- use images to prompt creative writing
- take existing photos and remix and create new images with them (with credit to the original owner, of course!)

Richardson also highlighted a use of Flickr by David Jakes, who is an educational technology coordinator from Illinois and maintains a blog called The Strength of Weak Ties. Jakes “decided to create an imaged version of the poem ‘Chicago’ by Carl Sandburg by linking Flickr photos to the more tag-able words in the poem” (p.107). I wanted to see this illustrated poem for myself – you should too – right here!

Jakes also offers a goldmine of a list of uses of Flickr in the classroom. What blew me away, was that this post was written just over 2 years ago. Where have I been?? Anyway, included in his list is using Flickr for digital storytelling, virtual field trips, and teaching how to use social software, just to name a few examples. His complete list is excellent and should be explored by anyone considering using photosharing with students. Check out the complete list. (Thanks to my friend Ronda who shared this with me!)

My parting words on photosharing…

After what was a bit of an overwhelming tour through Flickr, I am now feeling re-charged as I see the value in this tool in its application in an educational setting. I feel as though I have a really great selection of ways to use photosharing with students and am quite excited to try some out. I definitely see the "hook factor" of this tool with students as it can be used in so many ways and it can meet the needs of different learners. I must however, continue my exploration of Flickr to get my head around as many of the details as I can before using this tool. Onward!