Poetic License

I’ve spent the past few hours now trying to upload this photo to this blog, and I still haven’t been successful. I’m in a place (Camp Barney in Cleveland GA) with no 13 year old to help me, so I’m posting without the picture success story.  I will attempt to do it later when I have a knowledgeable teenager around to help.  The other night I was working on my “THINGS” and ran into a roadblock. I’m working on my son’s Mac and didn’t know why something easy was so difficult.  Thank goodness a young Mac user in the the other room told me all I was doing wrong was double clicking too slowly.  Makes me feel dumb, for sure.

Anyway… I spent hours reviewing Flickr and exploring the images. One thing I wonder, classroom aside, is how to get all my Picasa pictures on there – uploaded with the edits I’ve made.  Anyone have an idea about that? I do worry that the house will go up in flames or the hard drive on the computer will crash and there won’t be any backup–years of photos will be lost. Flickr is a good back up option, but so are photo services like Snapfish or Shutterfly.

As far as using Flickr in the classroom, I really like the sample Carl Sandberg poem that was illustrated by visual images using Flickr.  I originally began exploring images for a novel that I teach but found the images limiting because the novel is historical. I was looking for images that depicted Flint Michigan in the 1950’s as well as old Civil Rights photos. I found that challenging.  I can see using Flickr for slide show creations about a number of curriculum topics – everything from illustrating original stories to interpreting poetry.  I especially like the idea of having the kids use their own images.

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/florian_b/44227093/ by florian b 

FINALLY….SUCCESS!!!!!