Wow! Who knew that Flickr, the online photo storing website, could be so useful in education! I have only used Flickr to view family or friends' photos. I have never thought of its uses in the classroom. After learning about Creative Commons, it will definitely be a site that I use more to pull photos from.
As I started to explore Flickr, I wanted to find pictures that would directly relate to a fourth grade standard. In a few weeks, I will be teaching my students about solid figures (cubes, pyramids, spheres, etc...). I would love to find a real world tie-in to teaching my students all the characteristics (aka boring information) about the figures. I got the brilliant idea to pull photos from Flickr that represented each of the types of solid figures using pictures taken in the real world. I can use the photos as an introduction to solid figures or I can use the photos at the end of the unit as an assessment. As you can see above, I found a great photo to represent the figure sphere.
As David Jakes says, "Being visually literate is just as important as reading and writing and should be considered a fundamental literacy of a 21st Century education." (See his wiki at Visual Literacy and 21st Century Skills) There are so many uses for Flickr in the classroom. Ultimately, I could pull pictures of each type of quadrilateral so my students could review these characteristics. I also think Flickr could be used in many of the language arts areas. Prompt writing, looking at synonym or homophones, and using adjectives are all ways that Flickr could become meaningful in the classroom. Flickr is also great for looking at history and geography. Really the possibilities are endless, and I'm glad that I have learned a little more about using Flickr!
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