Friday, July 08, 2005
Social Software Series: Why Flickr is Great!
I briefly pointed you to Flickr yesterday to see the pool of photos related to yesterday's tragic bombing. Actually, there are several pools set up now and the media is using some of these photos, especially the ones taken underground with cellphones. How does Flickr work and how can it be useful to education?
I started using Flickr to publish photos to my blog. I have a personal blog and I didn't think it would be kosher to use Bryn Mawr web space to host my personal photos. I set up an account and began uploading. Flickr is completely simple to use. It's free (though I now use their paid service). You can upload pictures from your computer, from your camera, or from your cellphone (even while you're in the middle of the London tube). It's a great place to store and organize your photos. You can use the Organizr to create sets, which can then be displayed as slideshows.
Here's an example of a set created for an art history class. You can view the set as a slideshow, which can play automatically or you can click through it manually. If you take a look at a single picture, you can begin to see the real potential for this technology. Flickr allows you to select areas and add notes, a great tool for analyzing art! In this picture, you can see a number of areas have notes that when you move your mouse over them. The notes were added by both the students and the instructor. Further, the students have commented on the picture, prompted by specific questions from the instructor. The students can then actively engage with the image and think about and discuss specific aspects. (link via Weblogg-ed)
Besides allowing you to create your own image sets and slideshows, you can also take advantage of Flickr's tagging system to find images to use as content. You can browse tags or you can search both tags and titles and descriptions. For example, I did a search for photos tagged with "Philadelphia" and "buildings" to find pictures of Philadelphia buildings that might be used in a Cities or history of Philadelphia class. The result is probably too broad to be of use but you could narrow your search by looking for a particular building, perhaps city hall. It takes a little bit of work to do these searches, to figure out how images might be tagged. Clicking on a particular photo will also reveal all its tags, which might give you more ideas for how to narrow your search--much the same way subject headings in a library search lead you down the right path.
Much of the content is covered by a Creative Commons license that allows for non-commercial use. When you click on a specific image, the license is displayed on the bottom right. The default is "All Rights Reserved," so if you really like a photo and want to use it, contact the creator and ask. One of my students did this this summer and got permission to use a photo for a web site.
You can also follow a particular tag or person's photos using RSS. Here's the RSS feed for Philadelphia, which will look like jibberish in anything but a reader, but can be included in a web page using some of the available display tools. There are lots of tools available to help you take advantage of Flickr. Quick Online Tips has a continually updated post with tips and links to other resources.
I think there's a lot of potential for something like Flickr in education. Though we have ways of using images currently within Blackboard or through Visual Resources, Flickr is a lightweight and simple tool that people can use to quickly add images to their courses. And it gives you lots of ideas for how to use and improve existing tools.
flickr, social software
I started using Flickr to publish photos to my blog. I have a personal blog and I didn't think it would be kosher to use Bryn Mawr web space to host my personal photos. I set up an account and began uploading. Flickr is completely simple to use. It's free (though I now use their paid service). You can upload pictures from your computer, from your camera, or from your cellphone (even while you're in the middle of the London tube). It's a great place to store and organize your photos. You can use the Organizr to create sets, which can then be displayed as slideshows.
Here's an example of a set created for an art history class. You can view the set as a slideshow, which can play automatically or you can click through it manually. If you take a look at a single picture, you can begin to see the real potential for this technology. Flickr allows you to select areas and add notes, a great tool for analyzing art! In this picture, you can see a number of areas have notes that when you move your mouse over them. The notes were added by both the students and the instructor. Further, the students have commented on the picture, prompted by specific questions from the instructor. The students can then actively engage with the image and think about and discuss specific aspects. (link via Weblogg-ed)
Besides allowing you to create your own image sets and slideshows, you can also take advantage of Flickr's tagging system to find images to use as content. You can browse tags or you can search both tags and titles and descriptions. For example, I did a search for photos tagged with "Philadelphia" and "buildings" to find pictures of Philadelphia buildings that might be used in a Cities or history of Philadelphia class. The result is probably too broad to be of use but you could narrow your search by looking for a particular building, perhaps city hall. It takes a little bit of work to do these searches, to figure out how images might be tagged. Clicking on a particular photo will also reveal all its tags, which might give you more ideas for how to narrow your search--much the same way subject headings in a library search lead you down the right path.
Much of the content is covered by a Creative Commons license that allows for non-commercial use. When you click on a specific image, the license is displayed on the bottom right. The default is "All Rights Reserved," so if you really like a photo and want to use it, contact the creator and ask. One of my students did this this summer and got permission to use a photo for a web site.
You can also follow a particular tag or person's photos using RSS. Here's the RSS feed for Philadelphia, which will look like jibberish in anything but a reader, but can be included in a web page using some of the available display tools. There are lots of tools available to help you take advantage of Flickr. Quick Online Tips has a continually updated post with tips and links to other resources.
I think there's a lot of potential for something like Flickr in education. Though we have ways of using images currently within Blackboard or through Visual Resources, Flickr is a lightweight and simple tool that people can use to quickly add images to their courses. And it gives you lots of ideas for how to use and improve existing tools.
flickr, social software
