Te(a)ch

As a tool for higher education classes, Flickr’s uses really are endless but you may need some convincing. I have not done a survey, so this list of “top 10 uses” is one I made up, but it’s a catchy title, right?

First, what is Flickr? In a nutshell, Flickr is a web-based digital photo sharing, organizing and archiving tool. You may be asking why you, even in normal everday consumer mode, might need Flickr? If you use digital photos at all, then Flickr can be your life saver. You can upload and store you photos on someone else’s computer. Better yet, you can organize them into categories (yes, you can have the same picture in multiple categories). And even better yet, you can share these photos with just the people you know and love or with the entire world!

So, what about those top 10 uses for Flickr in a Higher Education Classroom? Well…here goes. Oh, and I am using the word “Classroom” in the broadest sense to mean either actually in your physical classroom or as part of the online environment that either delivers your class (full online) or supports your class (in-person class). You do have such an online space, don’t you?

Back to the list:

10) Virtual field trip – take a field trip either to a foreign country or someplace in your own backyard. Chronicle your adventures via digital photos. When you return from your trip, upload the photos to Flickr with your comments and organize them into a category. Voila! You have just created a virtual field trip of your very own.
9) Photos for your blog – If you are a blogger, Flickr allows you to publish directly to your blog from Flickr. Take the photos you want to share with your blogging community and upload them into Flickr. Enter the blog settings into Flick then Blog a photo and add whatever text you want. Visitors to your blog will view the photo and your text inside your blog.
Search for cool PPT images – Suppose you are an interior design instructor and you want to give your students a concept of how complicated colors can be and all the different shades and textures there are of, for example, the color BLUE. Conduct a search for “Blue” inside Flickr and see which of the over 1,000,000 photos you might use to convey different colors and textures associated with BLUE.
7) Organize photo collections – perhaps you have access to lots of photos related to the content of your course. Use Flickr to organize them into different categories. Remember you can put the same photo in different categories.
6) Student sharing of photo content for an assignment – Ask students to take pictures as part of one of THEIR projects and post the results to Flickr. You could even have them send you the photos and you organize them in your area then share them with the class.
5) Student portolio creation and sharing – ask students to create a photo portfolio of their work during a given semester. This would probably be most appropriate in art or design type classes but might work in others as well.
4) Virtual lab – much like the virtual field trip, the virtual lab uses photos to demonstrate the steps of a lab process. Better yet, design the lab and explain it to the students having THEM take pictures of each of their process steps.
3) Student photo search and sharing – ask your students to search for photos that represent a certain concept (for example, Love or Compassion or Truth or Gravity) and have them explain why they chose the photos they chose.
2) Student comments on photos – upload a photo to Flickr and ask your students to comment on it. You may learn something from their responses, and they may learn from each other as well.
And, the number 1 reason to use Flickr…Post all those pictures of your kid’s wedding or baby shower or birthday or whatever. Well, it’s not an educational use but it may be a practical one. Yipes!

An important word about copyright…those who post to Flickr can determine the copyright level of the photos they upload. Be sure to check the copyright info for each photo you select and make sure it can be used in the way that you hope it can. You can conduct an advanced search to select just those photos that can be used and built upon. Or, you can search in all photos.

Any other ideas about how Flickr can be used in the classroom? Notice I dropped the “Higher Education” part from the title because Flickr can be used in any classroom.