Thing 7

My Friend Flickr! 


I have been a Flickr user for a couple years now: A paying patron playing picture posting pleasure! 


I uploaded some photos I recently have snapped while making my way through Detroit. I tagged them RESA23, and included them in the set named, "Detroit Shots."


Thanks to the last "thing," I am really excited to use flickr to help my students learn about the world around them by seeing real pictures. I can't wait to get searching--and have them search too! My school district used to have flickr blocked, but they recently allowed us access, which I am really excited about. I think the tech department is acknowledging the numerous advantages flickr offers to the classroom. 


I also could see sharing photos with my students' families via flickr. It could work in reverse, too: families could share photos from home with us at school to help make further, deeper connections to what we are learning at school.


The possibilities are endless, and truly, I feel a bit short-sighted right now--like I am not even scratching the surface of what I could do with flickr! I am excited to see what ends up coming together! 

Thing 6

Yikes + Oops = Yoops! 

Life has been on overdrive lately and I haven't had a chance to move onto the next 'things' in a while. 


So, to make up for my procrastination, here is a picture riddle based off my flickr searchings. Try to guess the terms that I searched for! 


Ready?!

Pets and water? Nope. 

Cats and plants? Nope. 

Happy and Easter? YES!! 

For my first search, I was curious as to what kinds of pictures other people would tag with an ambiguous term like "Happy"--and sure enough, there were a lot of really interesting pictures! I work with students who find the job of defining emotions VERY difficult, so I thought that would be a good place to start. (I actually can feel a social studies lesson emerging... ;) )

But, BUT, but!!! I found I couldn't save many of them. So, I had to do the Advanced Search with the "Creative Commons" option to get an image to post to my own blog. (Sidenote: my first choices were these: Happy and Easter.)

For the second term, I am so excited about Spring Break which is HOURS away, that I couldn't pass up "Easter." I was kind of hoping for an image that would be really obscure...not the typical bunnies and eggs and religious themes. There were a lot of Easter Island statue shots which were cool (and one was my first pick linked above), but I loved these raindrops too. So, there we have it! 

I really enjoyed this "thing." I personally use flickr to gather and organize my own photos, but I haven't spent much time searching through "Everybody's" images. I have contacts who I like to keep taps on there, too. But, putting in a term and searching the whole site really shows just how vast this visual resource is! My students learn best through visual examples and I can see using flickr regularly to help them see the world in new ways.