Before dropping off to sleep last night, I read NetGuide’s February 08 issue. The How To Section contained an article on How To Use Flickr. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, then you’ll understand why this bought a smile to my face.
But, amongst all the good bits about how to use flickr (from a beginner’s point of view) was this url link to flickrbits.

This website has a total of 142 applications and plugins in the database, all of which utilise the Flickr API in some way. This is a pretty extensive list and will take me a while to work my way through so I thought I’d pass it on to you so that you can check it out in your own time.  Enjoy!

Have I mentioned that I love my twitter network? A few days ago a joint post from Chris Betcher & Sue Waters was written about picassa vrs flickr born out of tweets on twitter. I’d already mentioned in a previous post about using flickr more in the classroom this year, so flickr was already on my mind.

This morning on twitter started by @Riptide_Furse …………………

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………….. and ended in a skype call between Fred and myself where he shared what Flickr tools he presented to his teachers at the workshop and their various ways of being used.

Here are just some of the things Fred so generously shared with me ………

1. fd’s Flickr Toys

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This site is full of great tools to use with flickr photos. You don’t need to sign up (athough you can if you’d like) and within a few minutes you can create the most professional looking motivational poster. Here’s my 2 minute effort:

Suggestions for use in the classroom:

• Have students take a photo that represents school motto
• Use Jigsaw / Mosaic Maker with photos from around the school/community representing maths concepts (ie Shapes, angles etc)
• Use Warholizer for Start of Year Activity with student photos
• Spice up class blog with Cartooniser, Framer, Billboard, Slideshow, Writer (list is almost endless possibilities with these gadgets!)

2. Befuddlr

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Use in the classroom?
We talked this over for a bit and decided that you could have some major conversations about which photos would be easy or hard to un-bedfuddlr.

• What would make a picture harder to organise back to its original state?
• Fun problem solving activity to do for fast finishers
• An activity on a rainy day
• A taskboard activity
  

3. Dumpr.net

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You don’t need to sign up (but you can if you’d like) and within 2 minutes I managed to create this …………
A museum-photo of our Class Mascot Kawekakea meeting Ewan McIntosh at ULearn07 earlier this year.

_{Created with dumpr.net - fun with your photos}

Most of the tools in Dumpr.net are similar to fd’s flickr toys but there are a couple of different ones. Don’t mix up the url with Dumpr.com like I did -

Use in the classroom?

• Use Photo in Art Museum, Jigsaw, Make photos look old, Stone Mosaic, for Presentations, blog posts etc
• Use Photo to Sketch, Alien Vision for creating online avatars, profile photos etc
• Use Photo inside a photo for problem solving puzzles

4. Other Possibilities for the Classroom

• If you’re looking for ways to work REAL LIFE editing into writing
  What’s wrong with these pictures Apostrophes Quote abuse
• Spell with Flickr
• Animated GIFs with Flickr

Got heaps of time on your hands? You could check out this long, long, long list of The Great Flickr Tools Collection!

And if that wasn’t enough, those great folks from Commoncraft have released this:

Online Photo Sharing in Plain English

So, what are your favourite things to do with flickr?

I’m sitting in the Rotorua Convention Centre, in David Warlick’s session, The Magic of RSS, blogging in real time thanks to the technology of wireless connection!

As usual I’m up the front learning about RSS, what it is, how it works and how to use it, aggregators, and mashups. On David’s flickr example there was my photo I’d taken on Wednesday of Millenium Hotel where we’d presented and I’d tagged it learningatschool. An example of how powerful tagging and RSS feeds are.

“We are seeing a major shift in how we find information. We’re starting to train the information to find us!”

What did I learn? Tagging is very extremely important. RSS is information power. I could listen to David Warlick all day. It’s about conversations.

It was impressive to see just how easy it to train the information that you might be requiring for the classroom to come to you. Edge of seat stuff! You can RSS anything - from photos, to newspaper articles, blog posts - anything and everything that has an RSS feed. It’s all about being part of the conversation. You can pay particular attention to whatever is important. This is so much better than searching through 633,567,987 hits on Google!

Social bookmarking is something that I’ve started using - I’m now convinced that I should be using it all the time and no longer adding these to my favourites on my laptop. In fact, a lady in the audience at David’s sessions jumped up and yahooed when she realized that you could tap into other people’s bookmarks! Well, he did promise that that would happen.

“The shape of information has changed. This we need to understand. This is literacy. Information that will help you do your job. In most cases Students are not ready for this.”

We need to take advantage of time where we can jump a little ahead of our students and get our heads around how RSS feeds work and making the information come to us. And this is what make me excited. Making that information come to us and showing students how to make information come to them!

Through an aggregator you can connect to people who will help you to do your job. Teachers should be lifelong learners. This is an intensely valuable tool. This is a Personal Learning Network. George Siemens calls this “Connectivism”. Connect to people who can help you do your job. Help you do your job!

Podcasts? Grab the link and drag it into itunes. Works exactly the same way as an aggregator.
Some aggregators David suggested:
The most popular for educators for a long time was - bloglines Not dissimilar from Newsfire (newsfire is a download - not web-based) or Google Reader. That’s what I use.
A lot of people like netvibes (does load a little slowly) What’s nice though is that it allows you shape your aggregator into your own personal digital newspaper.
Web-based aggregators have a definite advantage in that they are available to you no matter which computer you are on.

The conference is almost over. I’m sad but glad to be going home to see my children. I’ve been empowered, motivated, inspired and affirmed. It’s all good!