Photo-sharing in elementary schools???

As I mentioned in my first posting, I am changing jobs this fall. I am moving from teaching Grade 10-12 students to Grade 2. Traditionally, I have tried my hardest to use technology to enhance my delivery of the curriculum. However, as I begin the transition to my new school, I have quickly began to realize that the use of technology does not appear to be as prevalent in elementary education as it is in secondary schools (or, at least the one that I am going to). Also, given the limited abilities of early elementary students, the way you use technology is also limited. Does this mean that I believe it should not be used at all? Absolutely not! I do, however, believe that it may require more creativity on my part.

Take for example, photo-sharing. When I began to reflect upon how I would use sites such as Flickr in my classroom a few ideas surfaced. First, I thought about how I could use the set creating feature in Flickr to create albums of pictures of various locations from around the world. The pictures could then be used to compare and contrast characteristics of these locations to our local community. I began by uploading pictures from a recent trip that I took to Hawaii and used the description feature to write a simple sentence about Hawaii for each picture. The pictures included trees, crops, and landscapes. My students will then be able to use these pictures to compare Hawaii’s characteristics to that of our local community. If you do not have your own pictures of different locations, you could always use the favourites feature to gather different photos for the students to view. Older students would be able to search Flickr for their own pictures, but I believe that I will need to have the pictures pre-organized for my Grade 2 students. The map feature in Flickr may also be useful as teachers or students could upload pictures and then plot the location of where they were taken on the virtual map.

Elementary teachers are great collectors of student work. Throughout a school year they compile hundreds of papers that are stored in each student’s portfolio. These papers are then sent home at the end of the year for the parents to store (I just recently disposed of a small forest of paper brought home by my 7 year old daughter). Wouldn’t it be great to store an online portfolio on a photo-sharing website for each student? Rather than gathering endless amounts of paper, teachers can simply scan or photograph important student work in the student’s online portfolio. Another advantage to having portfolios done this way is that even young students can then go into the portfolio and add descriptions of their work or state why the particular item was included in their portfolio. What a great way to have students reflect upon their work. One elementary art teacher has used Flickr to display his students’ work virtually for both students and parents to view. To see his work click here.

Photo-sharing sites could also be used as a communication tool for the school as a whole. In my new role as vice-principal, I could see myself using Flickr to display pictures of whole school events for members of the school community to view. A great example of this is found here. One obstacle that would need to be overcome before a school photo-sharing site could be established would be for each parent to provide the school with written permission to display pictures of their student. Also, the site would have to be public as it would be extremely time consuming to subscribe all of the families in your school to the school's site.

A final application that I could foresee myself using photo-sharing websites for would be to share ideas with other teachers. A great example of this is found at this site. On this site Grade 2/3 teachers have displayed various ideas that they have used in their math classes for other teachers to view. What a great way to share ideas between teachers in your division when implementing a new curriculum. This would be extremely beneficial for teachers in small rural schools where they may be the only teacher of their grade for many miles. This would create an instantaneous, virtual support network for every teacher.

I noticed with interest that several school divisions have blocked photo-sharing sites due to the potentially inappropriate content that could be posted on them. Does the potential for students to view explicit content mean that the site should be banned altogether? I believe that blanket solutions to these types of potential problems may be overkill. Students need to be taught how to search for appropriate content. They may need to sign a school pledge for appropriate Internet use and consequences for not following such policies need to be clearly outlined. There is such a wealth of information that could be used to enhance student learning on photo sharing sites. It would be a shame for students to miss out on this opportunity. If you are interested in reading more about the pros and cons of photo-sharing check out this site.

Using the photo-sharing website was very simple. In a matter of minutes, I had my first pictures uploaded. I appreciated the step-by-step directions given to you as you signed up for your account. One item to watch out for—be sure to upload the pictures after you have browsed and selected them on your computer before you move away from the upload page. At first I did not do this and I wasted a considerable amount of time reloading and uploading the same pictures for a second time. One teacher oriented site that I found useful was found here. This site not only gives directions on how to use photo-sharing websites but also provides some ideas to get you started using photo sharing in your classroom. Before you know it, you will be well on your way to sharing your photos with the students, parents and teachers in your school community and the world.