#5 (WEEK 3) Explore Flickr and learn about this popular image hosting site

Photo sharing websites have been around since the 90s, but it took a small startup site called Flickr (now owned by Yahoo!) to catapult the idea of “sharing” into a full blown online community. Flickr uses "tags" or what we would call keywords to help identify and search for photos.

For this discovery exercise, you are asked to take a good look at Flickr and discover what this site has to offer. Find out how tags work, what groups are, and all the neat things that people and other classrooms and libraries are creating thanks to Flickr.

Discovery Exercise:

In this discovery exercise, you have two options…

a. Take a good look around Flickr and discover an interesting image that you want to blog about. Be sure to include either a link to the image or if you create a Flickr account, you can use Flickr's blogging tool to add the image in your post. Another option you have for including images in your post is to use flickrCC to find copyright free images and Blogger's photo upload tool.

--OR--

b. If you are up to an easy challenge ... create a Free account in Flickr and use a digital camera to capture a few pictures of something around your campus or workplace. You can use your own camera or a mobile phone with a camera in it, or perhaps even borrow one from your workplace.

Upload your pictures to your Flickr account and tag at least one of the images “tassietoolbox” and mark it public. Then create a post in your blog about your photo and experience. Be sure to include the image in your post. Once you have a Flickr account, you have two options for adding your photo to your blog post: through Flickr's blogging tool or using Blogger's photo upload feature.

So go ahead, explore the site and have some Flickr photo fun and if you're interested in looking at some other photo hosting sites, then check out Picasa Web Albums from Google and another service called Smugmug.

PS: A quick word about photo posting etiquette and cybersafety - When posting identifiable photos of other people (especially minors) get the person's permission before posting their photo in a publicly accessible place like Flickr. Never upload pictures that weren't taken by you (unless you have the photographer's consent) and always give credit when you include photos taken by someone else in your blog.

Discovery Resources:

• Flickr Learn More tour (6 steps)
• Mediamazine Flickr Tutorials
• Flickr: Popular tags Interesting- Last 7 days
• Flickr Services (3rd party applications & mashups) and here's another Flickr site that lets you create movie posters, CD covers, magazine covers and so on.

[Note: Please remember to include WEEK# and THING# in your post headings.]

#6 (WEEK 3) Flickr fun, mashups, and 3rd party sites

Like many web 2.0 sites, Flickr has encouraged other people to build their own online applications using images found on the site. Through the use of APIs (application programming interfaces), many people have created third party tools and mashups* that use Flickr images. Here is just a sampling of a few …

• Mappr - takes Flickr images and allows you to paste them on a map
• Flickr Color Pickr - lets you find public photos in Flickr that match a specific color.
• Montagr – create a photo mosaics from photos found on Flickr.
• Poster Maker with inspiration sayings (add in any picture and saying)
• flickrCC - for discovering pictures people have released under a creative commons license
  

Discover more mashups, web apps, and Flickr tools.

Discovery Exercise:

Your discovery exercise for this “thing” is to: Explore some of the fun Flickr mashups and 3rd party tools that are out there. Create a blog post about one that intrigues you. You might want to check out FD Toys’ Trading Card Maker.

So have some fun discovering and exploring some neat little apps. If you are up to the challenge while you’re at it, create a trading card of your own. :) or a movie poster or magazine cover from this Flickr site.* Mashup Note: Wikipedia offers some great articles that explain mashups. Basically they are hybrid web applications that take features from one application (like Flickr) and mash it up with another (like a map) In this example, you get Mappr (http://mappr.com)

Curriculum Connections:

1. Idea #1: Use Flickr toys to make a magazine cover. Many groups make their own magazine. This would be perfect! Example for covers: "Welding Weekly," "Lonnie 'Technic Times," or "Genetics Today." Your trainees could create a magazine cover and headlines for a trade, module, or skill set.
2. Idea #2: Create trading card sets. Liven up mission projects, annual reports, and other topics that are ripe for change. Each class member could create a card or groups could design their own trading card pack. Trading the cards can be a fun game, but they can also be useful for recommended reading, books, illustrators, authors, and historical bios/dates. How would you use them? How about using them as Flash cards for vocabulary, periodical table, tools in the workplace, botanical samples, foreign languages or ELL.

using flickrCC

Here's a 5 minute screencast shows how you can find creative commons images and add them to your blog posts using flickrCC