Monday, June 15, 2009

Thing # 9

I enjoyed using Flickr very much. Flickr is a great way to search and share photos online, and with the advanced search through CC, it is a great way to find appropriate photos for use in presentations. I can think of tons of ways that we can use this in the classrooms. Presentations are always more interesting when there is visual stimulus as well as text. A picture says 1,000 words right?!

I have quite a few photos uploaded to Flickr...more than the free account will show :) Here is a link to some new family photos that were taken of us by Ms. Buck at Prather Park. http://www.flickr.com/photos/23212519@N08/


Also, the theme I chose to search for photos with CC license was Hawaii. I chose this esteemed topic in eager anticipation of our family vacation coming up next month! Yippee. Here are the photos I found that I liked.











Sunset Beach, Hawaii by Cougar-Studio















Waimea Bay, Hawaii by Shayan











Hawaii surfboard by mrtwism


And just because it made me laugh....











Sumo in Hawaii by hellochris


I enjoyed looking through the mashups for this activity. I like the idea of being able to take the Google maps and overlaying them with photos. This would be a super creative feature to use to generate scrapbook pages from family vacations or trips. It would also be a great application to use in a geography lesson taught in the library. Overlaying pictures of interesting sites and people from different geographic regions on a map would be more visually interesting for the students. This would be a fantastic way to support a multicultural book. By generating a map of where the character in the book is from, then overlaying a photo of the character over the map, the students would get an immediate reference for exactly where the location is. You could even have a task where the students had to match pictures of several book characters to the appropriate area of a map that is home for the characters!

One of the fun links I found was the Flickr Chia-Pet. You get to paint the Chia seeds on bald people and watch their green hair grow. How funny! Here is the link: http://www.krazydad.com/defacement/

I also absolutely love BigHugeLabs.com! There are so many ways I use this program to enhance photos and create interesting graphics. I use this program quite a bit to create enhancements for photos that I upload to my school or library webpage.

2 comments:

maryw said...

That Flickr Chia Pet is crazy! Thanks for sharing it and making us laugh this morning. :-)

Selena Knight said...

I thought it was funny too. I had to monitor more closely when the girls do it though because some of the things you can "chia" are not that kid friendly if you know what I mean :) Oops!