I love early morning Blog reading...it always gets me excited about the day ahead! This morning in my reading I ran across a really neat idea.
David Muir Writes about a personal project on Flickr documenting the year in pictures and then ruminates on if or how we might use this in schools. This is a spin off of Project 365 which David talks about and in essence it includes posting a picture a day to capture life or in our cases the life of a school or class. David says that at Project 365 they have included some weekly challenges to make it more fun. So what can we do? It can include some weekly challenges to so that this week we might all capture the essence of __________ ( you fill in the blank- for example maybe recess/break time) As you can see in the comment below which I left on David's site...I think this has incredible possibilities especially if we connect and make a group of schools around the globe. Talk about learning to appreciate culture and visual literacy and connections....etc So is anybody interested in setting up a Flickr group and participating???
Comment I left at David's site...
Before I got to the end of the post I had already thought about how this could be used at school. I love the idea and we are just about to start our second semester...so why not start now. I do not know if we have the energy to do public and private postings as some suggested but I want to do this.. the public aspect appeals to me the most...especially if we can connect with schools around the world..We Pre-K (3 year olds) to 8the grade (aprox 13 year olds). I will post this to my blog so if you are interested come on over and leave me a note.
Thanks for this great idea.
14 comments:
Hi Barbara,
I'd be interested in this, but we cannot use flickr in our school as it is filtered. I wonder if there is another way to do do this?
What does everybody think? To work around John's challenge what would happen if we tried to do this on a wiki?
A blog would be better than a wiki I think - the date stanping etc. that you get for nothing with a blog seems ideal for this type of project. I wondered about using elgg. It is a reasonably good blogging tool but offers file/photo storage too. Not sure how much space you get for free though. Can you access elgg John?
I think you can also have a number of groups/bloggs feeding into another one (I think). Certainly, I've been experimenting with sending my blogger blog feed to an elgg blog which seems to work.
I think you could therefore use elgg to pull stuff from other blogs (elgg or elsewhere), Flickr photos and elgg hosted photos.
Does anyone have more experience with elgg? Have I understood what it can do?
Hi Barbara,
I'm dimly aware of Flickr, and know it shouldn't be hard to be up and running with this project with a few minutes of learning the ropes.
So I'm definitely interested. We're already emailing, so let's talk!
David I do not know much about elgg but hopefully someone will weigh in.The reason I thought of a wiki was because of my participation in a wikispace project by Susan Sedro see link
http://wikiplaces.wetpaint.com/
I think you can also have a number of groups/bloggs feeding into another one (I think)
If we knew the participants it is fairly straightforward to mash up the rss feed from several blogs (quick and dirt example). Or use http://www.rssmix.com
I don't know if I can access elgg at school, but I would expect so.
Having said that I think the best way forward with this sort of project would be to use flickr, the commenting and notes would be a wonderful experience for the children.
I chatted with Clarence this morning via skype and he may also be interested. I agree John that Flickr does seem like the best venue in general... but I also do not want to leave John ( or anyone)out.
Today, I am looking at the flickr projects David mentioned to get some ideas for guidelines and challenges. Does a week from Monday seem like a good start time?
Hi Barbara,
I think you would be best to leave us out it will produce a great example which might be good leverage to get flickr unblocked.
An idle thought: I wonder if anyone could script a workaround using the flickr api, so that the flickr group could be viewed and posted to from a unblocked site.
Dear John,
Jeff Utecht might be a resource for a work around.I know he has some experience finding ways...
He can't access blogger in Chna but go to his site and contact him. I will also try to send him an email.
Bubbleshare is another option that seems to be free of the filter here in Australia - it doesn't have annotations but does create slideshows. I'd be really keen to do this project as well, especially with a Feb 5 start.
Graham, I took a look at Bubbleshare. It is a nice easy program but it does seem to lack some of the capabilities of flickr. Is flickr blocked at your school?
One of the traits that I value in flickr include the ability to tag and sort pictures, and the discussion options. BUT on the other hand I hate to leave people out too.
Hi Barbara!
I'm in!
I've got a flickr group set up already: http://www.flickr.com/groups/tesol_young_learners/
We will use that for the course. We are just exploring some uses of technology in the course, but we have English langauge teachers from quite a few different countries (on the programme this year, from 15 different countries). I'm concerned, though, about some blogs not being accessible in some countries - I didn't know this was the case! Does this mean that the sites my students are setting up cannot be seen in China/Taiwan? Bummer!
Great to have you aboard! Welcome. If you haven't done so yet check out the planning wiki and add your two cents so we can have all of the details squared away by Friday.
As for the blog question the answer is it just depends....It seems that the issue of blocking access varies from district to sitrict in the public sector and from school to school in the private sector. There are lots of people out there though so you should not have any problem with building and audience and a community.
Hi Barbara,
I put our school info on the wiki home page, but should probably have posted something here first - sorry. I've used flickr for our blog photographs and some of the pupils really enjoy the task of editing them using photoshop album and elements.
I think we could manage to be part of this? It sounds worthwhile.
(although I need to play around more with wetpaint!)
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