Monday, December 27, 2010

Flickr!

I have been using the photo-sharing website Flickr for quite some time now; I just never thought that I should join! I have been borrowing photos for years (under Creative Commons more recently now that I know all of the rules!), but I never thought to post my own pictures. I have always used Facebook for that, and I use Kodak Gallery or Snapfish to print my pictures (you can also upload and share your photos through those sites). I have enjoyed using Flickr in the past because you can search for photos and browse photos without having an account.

Upon creating an account with Flickr, you have many possibilities at your fingertips. As with Del.icio.us, you can sign in instantly if you have a Yahoo account (I hate mine), but I saw too late that you can also sign in if you have a Google account. I would have much preferred that, but I can always go back! I am not a huge fan of setting up your photos because I think it takes too much time. The uploading process was simple if you have a fast Internet connection. You open the folder(s) from which you want to upload and you can use CTRL click to choose all of the photos that you want to upload all at once! Flickr walks you through the entire process, so I can't say that it's not user-friendly. There's just something that I do not like but I cannot pinpoint it! Flickr does have a neat blog where users can submit photos for different categories and have their work displayed. There are some beautiful photos on the blog! There's one plus!

After creating your account and uploading your pictures, you can tag and organize photos. Tagging photos and writing titles/descriptions can take a long time no matter what application you are using, but it seemed to take even longer on Flickr because you can only work on 10-15 pictures at a time. I suppose that is a beneficial feature because you save your work after each batch of 10-15 pictures. That way, if your computer is having issues, you do not lose all of your work. You can create sets of pictures and galleries, but I am not yet sure what the differences are...I'm working on exploring some more! You can get help in their help menu, but it did not answer all of my questions. I also found this great site on how to use Flickr. The site explains many of the site's features in terms that non-tech users can understand.

Check out my first set of photos on Flickr from our most recent trip to Disney World. I have not yet written descriptions or tagged anyone, but I am slowly learning little tricks with the Flickr Web 2.0 application. To be honest, I am not sure that I will use Flickr in the future. After playing with the site a bit more, I discovered that if you want prints of your photos you can print them with Snapfish! Why wouldn't I continue using Snapfish to do almost everything that Flickr can do AND print my pictures like I normally do?

Check back soon for uses in the classroom! I hope you are all enjoying winter break!

5 comments:

  1. Nice detail here Leslie, I sometimes get overwhelmed with all of the different places that there are to store and sort information. Although I use flickr to find photos as well, I have never thought about posting my own photos there. I guess that I'm still old school and don't always like the idea of my stuff being "out there" in cyber space. But maybe I'll give this a try.

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  2. Leslie, I really like that you included Flickr. In class I feel like I only use it to look for creative commons pictures. I like the detail you added on how you would complete the process of uploading your own pictures. I also enjoyed looking at your Disney pictures! I love Disney!

    Do you think this is a program that you would use in your classroom? And if so, how would you incorporate it?

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  3. Megan, I'm not yet sure how I would incorporate it in the classroom. I know that's my next post, but I have to brainstorm some ideas first! I had some ideas floating around, but they didn't seem practical!

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  4. They can make comments on pictures using their Spanish. Maybe like narrate a scene (just a thought)? Also Fickr will allow to keep photos private?

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  5. Sarah, Yes, you can make your pictures private as well. I like that you can send an email only to those who you would like to provide access. Or you can simply use Flickr as a storage system for your photos in case you ever lost them. There is unlimited storage on their site!

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