Flickr: you can do more with photosharing!

Although Flickr is a tool that has been around for a while, I feel it is often over looked and under utilized. The tool can be used to simply share photos of classroom activities to share with students, parents or collaborating teachers. For the science classroom in particular, this tool can help to document laboratory results or can be used to guide laboratory setup, as in the example photo for a genetics lab raising fruit flies. In addition, flickr also can be integrated into your website, auto populating photos so anyone who visits your site can view your class activities, etc.

Flickr is a very easy photo-sharing site that is free to anyone. Once you create a Flickr account you can start uploading and organizing your photos. The site makes this very easy and first time users are walked through their first upload, making it very user friendly for the basic computer user.

Once you have your photos you can organize then by set and collection, making it easy to pull your photos, as you need them.

For those more advanced users, there is also a social networking aspect to this tool. Although social networking sites such as Myspace and Facebook have surpassed this tool, it’s simplicity and focus on photos lends itself to easy application in a classroom setting. It also allows you to share your photos without sharing all of your personal information.

Learning these tools like this one is vital to keeping students up to date on the latest media applications and helps to prepare them for a future of using technology in their workplace and professions.