Thing #5 - Explore Flickr

I had heard of Flickr before but never tried using it. I didn't particularly like the idea of going through tons of pictures posted by people I have never met trying to find something that might interest me. However, I can see the application for it. My husband and I travel alot during the summer and I do relate stories to my students during the school year about places I have been and things I have seen. The students often ask if I can bring pictures in from the places that we discuss in class. My goal now is to start uploading my photos to Flickr and using them to enhance my library lessons and also to teach my students how they can go to the Flickr web site and view my vacation photos on their own. The next step will be to teach the students how to create their own vacation photo web site and share them with their classmates. Also, our school has discussed the possibility of getting an inexpensive class set of digital cameras for the students to use for taking photos for science, social studies, etc... and uploading to our school web site during their computer lab classes. There are so many possibile applications....

I did like the tip about downloading photos from the Discovery Education web site. I use this web site almost everyday in my library classes. I usually start the year out discussing the autumn season and have my elementary students tell me what they know about fall. For example, how do you know it is fall, what holidays do we celebrate in the fall, when is the first day of fall, etc... So, I created a "fall photo" folder and plan to use it in my autumn lessons plans.
I thought I would display the photos to the class first - via the LCD projector - and let the students tell me what season they think the photos represent and why, then have our fall season discussion. Here are just two of the photos I could use in this lesson:


Of all the things I have learned so far, I feel Flickr is the web site that I would most likely use in a elementary school library setting.