Flickr: observation task and reflection
Posted February 6th, 2008 by bdieu
After opening your account on Flickr and following the instructions from Week 3, observe how people communicate and network in this environment.
What potential for learning do these objects and tools embedded in these distributed digital spaces offer? What affordances do they evoke?
What kind of language is used? How can this kind of material and
environment be used in our ELT practice - statically (photos as pictures in a book) and dynamically (photos as a social activity entailing taking them, organizing them, joining groups and dialogue onsite)?
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OK, Bee, I went back to Flickr to think some more about the social interaction which I haven’t ‘felt’ happening yet. Michael invited me to become a friend but apart from that it feels very quiet. I shall try to initiate inviting friends to join - useful post in the forum as to how to do this - thank you.
Karen
Who dares to teach must never cease to learn. John Cotton Dana
In Flickr, similarly to 43Trio, the social interaction is more distributed and follows a different pattern than in social networking places like MySpace or Facebook, for instance. Can you think of any reason why?
Because I haven’t spent much time social networking in MySpace or Facebook (and yes, I do have accounts in each of them much to my kids’ amazement, or possibly even their horror!), I may be completely wrong.
But the conversations in flickr are definitely more distributed and private it seems. The photo is the focus, which is more objectified perhaps than MySpace et al. Conversations occur through emails to people or comments or notes around photos.
Some of my students are ardent photo clickers and one always wonders what happens to the photos. Maybe this is somewhere to suggest to them as storage - I’ve always gone down the ‘Please email me a copy’ track.
I’m inspired to go next week and take photos of Unitec as a place, and then the minute my classes begin, to start taking photos of people doing, rather than the traditional people shots.
I like Bee’s static and dynamic labels. I would like to add vocal - is there any currently any possibility for audio recording in flickr?
Karen
I had never really thought of it before, but the langauge used in the comments I have read on Flickr is very encouraging, very aprpeciative, very positive. It might be a good place for students to practice simple skills like complements.
What I like about that idea is that, as a writing teacher, I am always trying to figure out how to get students to comment on each others' work in ways that are honest but polite. I want them to find both the good and the not-so-good in their classmates' work. This seems like it could be an interesting first step in learning to do that.
Well, I’m not part of the Flickr group so i don’t know if I should be writing here. I’ll write anyway, if I’m not supposed to do so,please let me know.
Last year my students used flickr to download photos for their blog. It was very difficult for them to understand they shouldn’t download copyrighted images. We talked a lot about that. It’s a really interesting topic to discuss. I found out that even though they were conscious of copyrighted text ot music, they thought that any image could be used.
If I have my students blog this year, I’ll ask them to write a short comment on the photos they use. Just to thank and perhaps to say why they’ve chosen that pic.
This is an important topic, Gabriela. One thing that I love about Flickr is that you can easily find Creative Commons licensed photos that can be used without problems. Of course, students still need to be educated about the issue.
I like your idea about having them leave comments on the photos they choose to download. It is a simple courtesy, and it is another opportunity for students to use English.
Last year I made a presentation about flickr and copyright/left. As we couldn’t access to the Internet at school I had to prepare slides to give some explanations.
Thanks, Gabriela. That was a really clear presentation on how to
access the Creative Commons licensed photos. Did you discuss the
different levels of licenses or was that not important in your
setting? I guess it probably wasn’t.
No, we didn’t discuss that. I talked about this with two groups, one aged 16, but the other mostly 12. So, imagine how difficult it was for them just to get a notion of what copyright was.
I’ve also looked for this in flickr, but I think you need to use a different tool for slideshows with sound.
Illya (smielt team)
I think what you did, explaining how they could get images they could use was the most important thing. Copyright is complicated; I’m not sure most of us really "understand" it. I just looked at a 224 slide presentation on plagiarism after I looked at yours. It is available for download but is copyrighted. So what does that mean? I can download it but I can’t show it to others? I am not sure.
I think it is really important that we put Creative Commons licenses on our work so others know they can use them. It is so much in keeping with the idea of social media that I am surprised that I sometimes forget it.
you’ve reminded me I haven’t added a cc license to my blog for this course.
I’ve also seen some images which are copyrighted but with the "blog this" button available. And some blogs with both copyright and cc license. Yes, it’s not very clear sometimes.
Gabriela,
Tomorrow I am introducing my 8th grade students to our new class wiki. As we populate it with color, images and student information (it is a private wikispaces), I am teaching students about Creative Commons licensing. They may not upload an image to the wiki without this license and attributing the image to the source. May I embed your Slideshare?
Sarah Braxton
Sarah,
I do not know what the level of English your 8th graders is, but I have prepared an exercise on Creative Commons for mine (reading and listening comprehension) you may want to play remix and reuse. Please refer your students to Peter Shanks excellent Flickr CC.
Wow, these are perfect additions to my class! The fact that your resources are on a wiki serves a secondary purpose - an example!
My students are English-only speaking. Many are low-achieving. Last week I was out for two days and returned on Friday to discuss their work using directories and databases to narrow terms. Class was like a zoo. I really wrestled with what to do, and decided finally to turn the class upside down and work from a wiki out. Hopefully they will get hooked on creatively contributing and I can find ways to integrate access, evaluation and use of information as the content. But it all gets mixed up together, doesn’t it, when social media is involved?
Sarah Braxton
Sarah, of course you can. Good luck with your wiki.
By the way, who are you in Twitter
The cc license and copyright issues are always good to refer back to. Just a reminder here - you can find some literature (and more) on the subject at the bottom of the reading list.
Illya (smielt team)
I think copyright issues and referencing sources are a very important part of our teaching social media. Most users are either not aware of it or do not know/understand how it works. I have noticed many of the students (and teachers) I know, just download pictures or reproduce material from the web without acknowledging the sources.
The general idea seems to be that just because it is out there on the WEB, it is free for the taking. I have spent quite some time to convince my classes (and colleagues) otherwise and this is why I believe that this discussion and awareness that there are laws should emerge before even starting to use these tools.
Although in education we do have fair use of some copyrighted materials, it is important to know where the limits lie and how to proceed. The Creative Commons License site is a great way to start as it introduces the concepts to the general public in a clear and organized way.