Fun with Flickr

Abbey Road

I'm finding Flickr to be very addicting. As I've been working with it the last couple days, I've been searching through hundreds of photos. Today alone I spent almost two hours (I am ashamed to admit) looking at photos from various places like London, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Hastings (where I grew up), Red Wing (where I teach), and other places I've traveled.

I finally chose London for my slideshow. I studied abroad in London during college and have been back twice since then. All of these photos were taken by my sister, my friends or myself. Although there are lovely pictures of London that I found on Flickr I decided to use photos that I have taken. I am by no means a photographer, but these photos bring back specific memories. I must admit, some of these photos are incredibly cliched, most being common attractions in London. Flickr is nice for organizing my photos together, something I can't seem to do myself.

Flickr would be helpful for creative writing. I could give students a slideshow and make up a story. Also, while studying the setting of a work of literature, it would be helpful to create a slideshow of the setting of the story. Students could use photos to create imagery or poetic writing as well.

Final Project Wiki

Here is my Final Project Wiki.

There are a number of ways that I could use wikis in my classroom. When I envision using wikis in the classroom I lean more towards reading literature and responding in wiki form than actually setting up a wiki for the sole purpose of writing.

I would like to use wikis for literature circles with my ninth graders. This would work well because students can record and respond and there can be a written record of their discussions and thoughts.

Also, while reading any novel, small group wikis would be beneficial to increase students' comprehension. Students naturally like to talk about the books anyway so to have them do it in a productive, technological manner would be beneficial.

As we've discussed in class, the collaboration aspect of working with wikis is constructive because students can corroborate their own ideas or opinions based on others' ideas. Collaboration is an increasingly important skill which students need to develop.

As a teacher it would be helpful to monitor students' activity on the wikis. Also, I often have a difficult time giving students feedback in a timely manner on essays. With wikis I feel as though I can evaluate students' writing and the revision process can be much more immediate as well.

Some challenges that may occur for students in collaborative writing seem to be the same challenges that students face whenever group work is assigned. Some students ultimately do more work than other students. Students may rewrite portions of the wiki which someone does not want rewritten.

Digital Note-taking

Using Inspiration would be very beneficial for students when looking at a novel. It would be helpful to analyze characters using mapping, or analyze themes from novels. Inspiration is also helpful with the outline format. Using the outline format would be beneficial for students when generating ideas for essay topics and organizing essays.

For my own use I find Google Notebook very handy. I have been using it a lot for school work and just general notes on websites. I think this could be helpful for students as well while researching on the internet.

Barn Bluff

Awwww, my lovely teaching town.

Testing out the Flickr.