Ch 7 Fun with Flickr
The digital camera might be one of the most amazing inventions of all-time. The fact that I can use my phone to take a decent picture and see the results instantaneously is awesome. Sure the quality will never equal that of an actual camera, but my phone is always on me and I can take the shot and email or text it out within seconds.
In terms of the classroom, I love that I can digitally photograph my students, but I need to be careful what I post online and make sure that I have parental permission when posting them online. I think I'd be more careful doing that type of thing on the classroom website or Wiki, than to an open blog forum. As Richardson states, there are 1-2 million pictures uploaded to Flick daily, and it is not possible to completely police the inappropriateness of what might happen via that site.
Fortunately, Flickr provides an option for creating private groups where I could share pictures with only selected people (students, parents, teachers, and administrators).
On the flip side, parents would love to see images or video of what's going on in the classroom and the school. This would be a great way to strengthen the home-school connection. Flickr is a free site (as long as the volume of pictures is reasonable), and it seems pretty easy to use. I have always had my wife post our pictures that we have on our digital camera, but I think I can now take hold of the operation after reading this chapter. I think I will start visually documenting the classroom more as well. With our system of evaluation, we need to document our steps toward achieving our goals. Taking pictures and posting them via Flick seems like a great way to document and to show that I am trying to incorporate technology into the classroom.
I know the students would love the ability to annotate the pictures they post. They could create living comic strips!
You've inspired me to try using Funflicks. I am on Facebook also, and to have pics uploaded but my kids or husband do this for me. I need to learn to do it. I have used pics in the classroom the old fashioned way by developing them and placed on preview for all students to see. They love it! Even pictures of classes from years ago....many students recognize the students...some are even siblings! Plus they want to experience the same skit exprerience shown in the pic....it's my advertising of what's to come!
ReplyDeleteSharing this with parents sounded like a plan too, especially since one of our school goals is to increase the parent/teacher connection!
I will need to be vigilent about parent permission as I sometimes forget about these important legan and administrative issues.
I can see many ways to use Funflicks in my teaching.
I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one who's still not adept at uploading pictures from a digital camera. (I don't even have a Smartphone...yet) But I agree that it's a great tool for the classroom, and it sounds like Flickr is really user friendly.
ReplyDeleteI hope that I can get organized enough this year to have my grade 6 Spanish classes exchange photos and comments in Spanish, with students in Mexico, as part of a project that I have students do every year. It would be lots of fun, as well as a great way to use their Spanish in a meaningful way.