Thing 7: Flickr

I was excited to be able to check out Flickr, especially to find pictures that I could use for a project.  Like I said in a previous post, I am not much of a photographer, but I understand the importance of using images to enhance people's understandings of concepts and ideas.  So I had a little bit of trouble choosing between option one and option two for Thing 7.  I decided to do some of both.

Having access to a picture bank, which contains more photographs than I could ever hope to take, is exciting.  I love historic places, but I don't get to travel to any very often (I'm usually overruled by my three brothers).  Seeing pictures is the next best thing.

I decided to do a search for pictures from Colonial Williamsburg (My very favorite place in the world).  I searched through the group on Colonial Williamsburg and the Williamsburg tags for a picture that I would like to blog about.

This is the picture I chose:

  Photo by Jim Frost

I chose this picture because it reminds me of one of my favorite vacation memories.  The man in the picture is a reenactment specialist at Colonial Williamsburg who plays Lafayette.  He talked to my family, in character, for almost an hour about the history of Williamsburg and Lafayette's role in the Revolutionary War.  Even my younger brothers thought he was interesting (it is hard to get 12 and 10 year old boys interested in anything to do with history).

I was surprised by how easy it was to find pictures.  I tried to search for a few different topics before I settled on Colonial Williamsburg,  Each time, I found exactly what I was looking for without having to try seven different synonyms and twelve different spellings for each thing I was looking for. 

I also uploaded some pictures of my family, including my puppy dog.

His name is Gibson, and he is a lab/ rat terrier mix.  He is the sweetest dog in the world, and I don;t get to see him enough.

Setting up an account was easy, and uploading pictures wasn't much harder.  It's rather exciting when things go smoothly.  

In an earlier post, I wrote about my experience with Photobucket.  I like both sites, but I would use them for different things.  Flickr is better to use if I am looking for pictures that I do not already have.  Photobucket is better for editing photos I do have.  If I was working a project, I might use both; Flickr to find the photos to include and Photobucket to actually create the project.

I think that photo sharing sites do have a place in the classroom.  First, photo sharing sites are a quick and easy way to share information.  Have you ever tried to get information about a class project from a first grader, or a high school boy?  One is unable to clearly share information, and the other is (usually) unwilling.  Images are an easy way for parents to see what is going on in the classroom.  Students can also use photo sharing websites to share information and to create projects.

I'm not sure I would use photo sharing sites to share personal photos on a regular basis.  First,  I don't have that many to share, and second, I can already share photos with the important people in my life on Facebook. 

Here is the link to the top image:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/treehuggergal/4843936181/