Thing #8 More Fun with Flickr and Mash-ups

Flickr features a fresh approach to managing photos and creating fun posters, cards, etc. Within education, this site would serve as a great resource for retrieving photos that represent history, geography, science, language arts and even math. Additionally, pictures represent a universal language of learning as a photo is not defined by an single language. Therefore, projects that incorporate photos aids in leveling the playing field of the students by breaking down language and, in some cases, aptitude barriers.

I do feel that as a future math teacher, the opportunity to utilize Flickr for math lessons is fairly restrictive, with the exception of geometry as there a multitude of shape options to retrieve with a creative mindset. Flickr also lends itself well to evaluating tessellations, in fact there is an origami tessellation group on Flickr that creates and shares ideas on incorporating origami projects in the classroom. I did enjoy playing with some of the mash-ups and I felt that the puzzle maker was a neat tool that could easily be incorporating into teaching lessons. In utilizing jigsaw in the math class, it will aid in offering students a visual aid to discuss proportions, percentages and fractions by evaluating the values of the completed portions and uncompleted portions of the puzzle.

From an artistic component, there are numerous options to incorporate math related art into the classroom such as Spell with Flickr, which is utilized at the top of this blog. There are also various options for creating posters, cards and calendars. One of my personal favorites, is Motivator; it allows teachers the opportunity to create motivational posters with students from your class. Now that's cool!

The one component that makes me a little uneasy in utilizing personal photos on Flickr is ensuring that the photos we create remain private. I feel that it is my personal obligation to protect both the identities and images of my students. I do realize that Flickr allows you to keep photos private and limit access to photos to select group of individuals. As technology continues to advance, I feel that the opportunity to surpass security features is a legitimate concern. Perhaps I am being a little overly cautious, but I do feel that this is a legitimate concern.