Flickr has a lot of potential for use in the classroom, in my opinion. The pictures that people take of various objects can be incorporated into your lessons.
Let's say a person takes a trip to Spain, and takes a ton of pictures of various foods, shops, streets, signs, buildings, monuments, etc. This person then comes home and uploads his/her photos to Flickr, and groups them together based on what the pictures are of. This person then may tag these photos with information about what's in each photo.
As a teacher, if I am searching for pictures of Spain, with a simple search I may come across this person's photos of the trip to Spain. These photos are authentic pictures of the country that I will be able to share with my students. There will be pictures of many things that I can incorporate into my lessons. Perhaps there will be pictures of vocabulary words that are in their lesson, or pictures of some cultural aspect of Spain that we learned about. Students can analyze these pictures to discover exactly what is going on in each one. Ex. What type of clothes are people wearing? What buildings are in the background? What kind of signs do you see?, etc.
My only concern is that locating these pictures may take a significant amount of time, something that is limited in the life of a teacher.
The above picture, downloaded from flickr, illustrates the potential that flickr has in connecting people, content, and context.
Your concern about time is a very valid one. Perhaps finding a Flickr group that has the types of pictures that would be useful to you would help. Here's a link to search for Flickr groups. http://www.flickr.com/groups/
ReplyDeleteDr. Burgos