Thing #8 - Pickr 'n' Flickr

Image Generational, originally uploaded by Iridesce.

I made this conversation heart at the Acme Heartmaker, and I can't wait to play with it!

So, I started with this image. I entered it into retrievr, and it gave me all of these cool options. I next played drawing my image instead of uploading it, entering a sort-of U.S. flag as my input, and wow, one actually came up as a result!

Then I played around with Colr Pickr, and I really enjoyed this quote - it speaks to the role of Web 2.0 for artists and hackers the world over:

This is either something that designers and photo editors have been waiting their whole lives for, or one of those "I've created this because the Web lets me do it" kinds of things.
-- Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

Maybe I should make it my Web 2.0 goal to have one of my photos show up on Colr Pickr!

The guy who made Colr Pickr also made this cool image using science fiction book covers! And this one made of iconic "peril" signs! Mouse over them to see the individual photos making up the mosaics.

Finally, spelling, my favorite thing, brought to you by Spell with flickr:



See? A magic spell.

That sums up how I feel about sharing photos online: magic. I could spend hours (and woo hoo, as a teacher, I can, during the summer!) playing around and looking at this stuff. I'm not sure how to use it in a classroom setting - maybe looking at animals' camouflage with the Colr Pickr? Or trying to find national flags or countries on a map with retrievr?

Thing #7 - Flickr?!? I hardly knowr!

Polar(ized) Ice III, originally uploaded by Iridesce.

Here's a photo I took in a place I consider my "extended classroom," the Exploratorium in San Francisco. It's a view of water crystals viewed through a polarized lens. Rainbows! Yay!

I have used Flickr for years for its wonderful social networking abilities and ease of use. I keep some school photos on there; if they feature students, they're listed as private -- if you see any students, please let me know! -- mainly for my own media storage. I'm not sure if I'll use it for public classroom photos (if I did, I'd have to create a new user, since I don't want my kids/their families seeing my personal stuff).

Right now, I have my wedding pictures catalogued and hope to make a big book (though Flickr's service) soon. Overall, I love having photos "out there" - photography has been a great hobby. I hope to keep it going in the future.

I've tried Picasa, a long time ago, because it meshed with Blogger first. My early blog days had a few Picasa-loaded photos, but Flickr arrived and was superior then. Honestly, I haven't looked at other sharing sites in a long time. I hate it when they make you sign up as a user before you can look at others' photos; Flickr is open and free.

And, they have the Explore function! You can find out what the most popular tags are (displayed in a cool wordswarm), or find photos deemed "interesting" by their online traffic.

Maybe I'll use Flickr in the classroom as a vocabulary-building exercise; kids can enter vocab words and see what kinds of tags show up!