BP10_2009103_Flickr lesson

Every semester I have my Studio Tech students create Digital Portfolios, for which they need photos and other media. Many students want to get pictures of the music lab or the recording studio at school, or other relatively generic school photos. If each student had a Flickr account, they could post their portfolio photos to their accounts and we could create a group for all the students in the class to share their photos with each other.

I always love it when students are inspired by other students sharing their work; this often happens when we share our digital portfolios. A class collection of photos on Flickr could provide this same inspiration to students.

Advantages to sharing photos this way would be that students could easily upload photos from home or school, using tags on the photos would make it easier for students to find the specific photo content they're looking for, and it would give students the opportunity to utilize a Web 2.0 tool for classroom use that they most likely already use at home. This would help to bridge the technological gap between the students' use of technology in their home life and their use of technology in their school life. Additionally, photos would be available from previous semesters' students as well, creating an archive of available photos for students to utilize in their digital portfolios.

Since we already use Flickr as a resource for finding Creative Commons photos, this would also provide a great opportunity for students to license their own photos. It would help to introduce them to the concept from the perspective of the content creator, not just the content consumer -- the role in which they most often find themselves. It would allow us to discuss and debate the differences between the different types of Creative Commons licenses and give students the responsibility of determining which type of CC license they feel would be most appropriate to their work.