Flickring about

I've been playing around with Flickr during my holiday, and I'm quite impressed at how quickly you can upload images, tag them, geomap them (locate photos on a map to show where they were taken) and publicise them to all and sundry. In just three days of being a Flickr member, I have posted 27 photos, received 50 views and about half a dozen comments, all very positive, about my artistic expertise and skills in photogenic composition (here's one I made earlier - know where it is anyone??). If you want to see some more, you go to my photo collection and have a look. This is all very encouraging and affirmative stuff, and must be a key reason why Flickr is so addictive. Flickrites are just so darn nice!

Anyway, it got me thinking about all the teaching and learning posibilities of Flickr and other photo-sharing/social networking services. A big selling point is the fact that the discussion centres upon an object - in this case an image - which could be any kind of learning object. Another useful feature is that there is the facility to 'favourite' an image - this counts as a kind of polling or voting function - another useful learning tool.

Now I've got the hang of it, I'm busying my little mind on how I can possibly harness the potential of Flickr (and Picasa, and others) to enhance my teaching sessions, and enable students to become more creative in their learning endeavours.