I love my NikonD40. It was extremely valuable piece of equipment to record my travels on the way home from Argentina recently. I’m am convinced that when you know you have a good camera in your hands, you tend to take better pictures. Well, subconsciously I think you do anyway.

I was kinda “chuffed” then, when I got this email from Schmap Guides

Hi teachingsagittarian,

I am writing to let you know that one of your photos with a Creative Commons license has been short-listed for inclusion in the fifth edition of our Schmap Auckland Guide, to be published at the end of this month.

www.schmap.com/shortlist/p=10747684N00/c=SH51013676

Clicking this link will take you to a page where you can:
i) See which of your photos has been short-listed.
ii) Submit or withdraw your photo from our final selection phase.
iii) Learn how we credit photos in our Schmap Guides.
iv) Browse online or download the fourth edition of our Schmap Auckland Guide.

Our submission deadline is Sunday, July 13. If you happen to be reading this message after this date, please still click on the link above (our Schmap Guides are updated frequently – photos submitted after this deadline will be considered for later releases).

Best regards,

Emma Williams,
Managing Editor, Schmap Guides

After thinking about it for a couple of days I did eventually click on the submit the day of the deadline.

Today, when uploading some new photos to flickr I saw an email from Emma Williams congratulating me on the selection of my photo and details of how it looks in the Schmap Auckland Guide. It also gives me credit for the photo.

And it’s even got an iPhone view!

If you’re interested in taking a closer look at the actual photo you can find it here.

I’m off to learn how to use the Manual mode a bit more!

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 …………………

_{Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!}

………….. 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

_{Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!}

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

_{Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!}

_{Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!}

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

_{Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!}

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?

After listing Favourite 5 in the Classroom of 2007, and reading several posts about others’ favourite apps, videos, tools, resources of 2007, I thought it would be a great idea to list 5 6 things (in no particular order) to try in the 2008 classroom from others’ favourites lists. There’s some on the list that we have dabbled with before in the classroom but in 2008 I’d really like to see them being used to their full potential.

1. Animoto (seeing the potential for students creating “hooks” for other students when summarizing/reflecting on, their learning)

2. Google Earth and Maps (seeing the potential for visually connecting our classroom with the world)

3. Flickr (love the potential of the visual design)

4. ToonDoo (can taste the potential for hooking in the boys)

5. PictureTrail (there’s that visual design potential again)

6. Sketchcast (imagining the potential for students to demonstrate mathematical knowledge)

What will you trying out in your classroom in 2008?

I need to say special thanks to my good friend Kim, because she contributed heavily to an “aha” moment when I realised that I’d been categorising my posts instead of tagging them. Doh!  So now I will be tagging all my posts and tidying up the categories!

^{_{Attribution:
Original Unedited Image: ‘trust love try focus grow‘
www.flickr.com/photos/60368684@N00/47910191}}