Photosharing in the Classroom
By Tina Luffman
As we continue to explore new ways to teach using the Web 2.0 tools available to teachers today, it is important to consider photosharing. This week I created a Flickr account and uploaded some scenery pictures. It didn?t take long for me to realize the importance of gathering photos with large enough resolution to look nicely when played in the slideshow view.
One thing I can see teachers using photosharing sites for is to search for pictures for a specific geographic region being discussed in the classroom. For example, if the class is reading a novel, the instructor could run a search for photos in Flickr that are tagged as being from that specific region. Last semester I decided to create a PowerPoint presentation with pictures I found online from the San Francisco Bay area as the novel we had been reading took place there.
Creating this presentation took a lot of time because I had to do a search on the Internet, and then I had to copy and paste each of the pictures into PowerPoint. Then I had to upload this PowerPoint into the Blackboard course for each class I was teaching. Using Flickr will make this process much more simple. I can go to Flickr, run a search for pictures, and then upload the ones I want. Students can be enabled through a ?group? setting to see these pictures and captions I place between them to get a feel for the Bay area. All I would need to do in Blackboard is to create an External Link to the Flickr page.
Another idea for using photosharing in the classroom is to put a set of pictures into the Flickr page. Then I can have the students view these pictures and write an essay about one of them. These can be landscapes, people, action scenes, or whatever we choose. I can ask students to write a descriptive or illustrative paragraph of a scene, write a narrative about a person, and so on. There is not limit on the imagination for this activity.
Teaching sequence is another thing we can do with photosharing. As an instructor, I can set up a series of events and take pictures of them while working through the process. Then I can put the pictures into Flickr and ask students to order the photos and write a description of why they believe these photos happened in the order they created.
Group work is something I would like to try in photosharing. I would like to ask all students to gather some pictures of their own and load them into a group Flickr account. Then students could create an assignment using their shared photos. The challenge with an activity like this is knowing when it is reasonable to expect students in an English class to have technological ability and access to equipment for such a project. I do not feel It is reasonable to expect all of the students in my class to have access to a digital camera or the ability to scan photos at this point. It is reasonable to expect students to view, but not necessarily to create photosharing sites. Eventually these skills will be relatively universal especially for those who come to the campus for face-to-face classes.
