Week 3, Thing 5: Flickr

Devil's Kettle, Judge C.R. Magney State Park, MN
Originally uploaded by cobberloudogg
Above you should be able to see my first photo uploaded to flickr. I know, I am a little behind the times! This photo was taken this summer at Judge C.R. Magney State Park, along the North Shore of Lake Superior. For those interested, the intrigue of the Devil's Kettle is in the falls to the left: Nobody knows where it goes!

I was extremely impressed with the ease of this site. After a quick introduction, I was able to find pictures of me that had been posted, and pictures tagged by location. As a MN history teacher, what a great resource this could be for finding photos of different places in the state. I found over 300 photos of Grand Portage, MN, including pictures of the fort itself, as well as images of the HIgh Falls on the PIgeon River and the portage itself. Those of you teaching know that students are becoming increasingly visual and almost require some sort of visual stimulus to engage them in learning. For that reason, I incorporate a great deal of photos to help them see the places or objects we are talking about and helping them make connections. A photo sharing site like this becomes an invaluable source of visuals. And being able to search by location is extremely helpful and makes this tool very accessible.

As far as student uses, my students had used some photos on flickr to include in podcasts they were making about the state park system. They were allowed to do this as long as they cited their sources. Because we did not have the ability to travel ourselves, flickr made a project like this possible. However, being unclear with the flickr copyright policy, I am not sure if this was such a wise choice. Does anyone have any other ways that flickr could be used in your classroom/library? Would a middle school library presence on flickr help to promote programming to students? With flickr's privacy settings, I would think that this could be feasible, as well as motivating for students. Just a thought...