There has been a fair bit of discussion in the scot-edu-blogs world of the use of Flickr in the classroom. David especially has produced a pile of great ideas and examples. Also under discussion has been the access to flickr in schools, many local authorities block flickr and similar file sharing/storage sites.
I’ve been thinking about getting more blogging, maybe on an individual basis, done in class and in using flickr images as a source of illustrations or starting points; so I have been working on a crude workaround for the blocking.
I’ve made a wee SuperCard project that takes a word, downloads the first couple of hundred thumbnails of photos tagged with the word and lets me select them. After I’ve reviewed and selected them the app downloads the small and medium sized photos, makes a webpage displaying them along with a snippet of credit showing the license.
example: red, example: glasgow.
The idea is I would then take the folder into school on a pen drive and put it onto the local network so that my class could select pictures to use on the blog or other places.
It also will give me a chance to talk about creative commons and attribution.
As far as I can see, this should be legal from the copyright point of view (I am only using photos with creative commons Attribution or Attribution-NonCommercial Licenses) and as I have reviewed all the photos it should be fine with the authority. I’d welcome any opinions on this before I start using it.
The children miss out on using flickr and all the associated tools but we do get access to a pile of inspiring photos.