Week #3, Things #5, 6, 7 - Flickr

This is my Flickr exploration week. I've used Flickr for about two years now to upload photos of my family for other family members to see what we're up to. I admit I've also used it to show many, many photos of transportation (fire trucks, vans, police cars, bulldozers, etc.) to my two-and-a-half-year-old son. It's easy to find a group that has hundreds or thousands of photos in one category like that.

So I have been thinking about using Flickr in this way at school, to quickly show kindergarteners photos of sushi if they are studying Japan, or even photos of Japan. I would find the groups and browse them quickly beforehand and then have them ready to show. I found this collection that would be fun for my students to see - 1,879 photos from over 500 users just about sushi!

http://www.flickr.com/groups/sushi_sushi/

I also would use these photos and the Creative Commons licenses to teach my older students about copyright. We would learn about the different types of licenses and they would be tasked to find photos on Flickr that are available for them to use in school projects.

I used the mapping feature in Flickr to mark the location of the sightseeing photos I took in Washington DC. (click here) It was remarkably easy to use and I thought of the similar maps you can create in Google Maps. I started making one for Washington State history, pinpointing important locations in Washington's history. This is a project I could see my fourth graders doing at school, if we could get around the 'everyone has to have a Google account' problem. We can't do that with fourth graders. Maybe a school account that everyone uses?

I also had fun using the trading card maker and would love to use it in projects, maybe Washington State location trading cards, finding appropriate photos on Flickr?