Thing 12

I thought Flickr was very cool, and very user friendly. It was so easy to upload photos, and search for photos. I think it would be a great sight to use for reports. If the class did a report on Mackinac Island in Michigan, they could just enter key words, and have a fantastic new perspective. It is really interesting to see other people's perspective on the same topic. This would make the students more engaged, instead of just using the classic encyclopedia pictures.

I think a potential pitfall is that there may be inappropriate pictures found during a search as well. I think the teacher previewing the topics first could help that. Maybe during instructions, tell the students to go to the first 5 pictures. You could limit the amount of searching done during class time that way, and keep the students more focused. It would be easy to lose an hour just searching, and looking at photos.

I would like to use the photo sharing when adding pictures to my smart board presentations. For example, when I'm teaching about angles, I'll include different pictures from Flickr into my presentations for interest. I love seeing how other people have captured different topics. When I searched Geometry, I immediately saw a few photos that I plan to upload to my classroom website.