Chapter 7 Response

After playing around with Photopeach this weekend, I had a solid sense of what Flickr was all about; a "photo hosting site" that allows you to access, post, and organize photos for your personal use, and certainly for use in the classroom.  The added feature that really appealed to me was the site's capacity for annotating images.  The use of images to engage students' thinking is very powerful.  Add to that the ability, through annotation, to engage in discussion within and beyond the walls of the classroom, and learning could really be the social experience it is meant to be!

Tagging is a huge feature with Flickr as well.  I know it's a tool for searching, organizing searches/info. and for connecting with others with common interests, but it still seems vague to me.  (If anyone can put it in a nutshell for me so that I'm pursuaded to make the "tagging commitment," feel free!)

There are some distinct ways I could use this with students.  I see it as a great tool for categorizing photos around specific lessons; using it as a tool for activating prior knowledge to launch a unit of study; using collections of photos to illustrate comprehension strategies. (The annotation feature is a bonus here!)
I'd also like to tap into it as a tool for my graduate course on content literacy.  I have to investigate that a bit further...

I know we've all expressed concern about providing safe access to this and other Web 2.0 tools to our students.  Because I don't have a core group of students that I see, I want to be sure that I am fully in the loop with permissions and procedures as we get up and running with the technology!

On a final note about Flickr, as I searched "content literacy" for endless photos, I came upon one that I viewed as a message for all of us feeling overwhelmed with new information right now!!