Social Networking Opportunities
Flickr is a sophisticated and evolving digital application for complete online photo management and sharing, worldwide. It allows users to share and exchange photos and provides a way of managing and organising picture galleries. Flickr is a truly compelling tool that has amazing potential for education.
Key Advantages
Your photos are with you, wherever you go
Photographs can be uploaded and shared only once, then easily and safely retrieved and shared through Facebook, Twitter, email, blogs and other social interactive channels. The whole upload process from start to finish takes literally minutes and can be done as soon as you are ready to start. With apps for using Flickr on iPhone, Android, and Windows phone, it can always be available to you.
Develop a sense of community
Schools can take advantage of RSS capability to create a database of appropriate images about their school that can be delivered automatically to parents and other community members who subscribe to the RSS feed. This can help to promote and extend your school’s reputation and profile. Through useful Flickr stats, you will gain a greater understanding of the ways that people are finding your photos.
Supports learning in the classroom
Flickr photography can be used to support lessons that promote and build visual literacy skills in students. From the use of photographs as writing prompts, to the creative interpretation of multiple image sets, Flickr can help to develop storytelling projects and writing talent. Users can also contribute to the development of online stories about images that may have been tagged by another school or user. Photos may be used to support specific learning arguments in a wide range of subjects in the
classroom. The use of Flickr imagery also enables teachers to help students understand and apply the concept of intellectual property rights.
Multiple formats supported
There are many ways that schools can upload photographs to Flickr – through the web, a mobile device, email or another photo app. Multiple-backed storage ensures that photos will never be lost.
Visual presentations
Flickr photos can be used in digital and visual portfolios, through the photoset function. This is a very useful presentation aid for students and teachers alike.
Introduce your class to new cultures and contexts
Keep your class up-to-date with photos of exchange partners, feeder schools and educational establishments in other parts of the world. Photos can be tagged with stories, locations, people, comments and notes to create new learning potential.
Flickr continues to evolve and develop. It is easy to use and more and more schools are now recognising how it can play a useful part in delivering exciting learning outcomes for students, as well as building visual connections with the outside world.
