This week is about the social nature of online picture-sharing. Again, there are many services out there that people use -- two you hear a lot about are Flickr and Picasa (more - Photobucket, Webshots). Both allow you to upload pictures and then share them others for free (you can also pay for "premium accounts" that give you much more storage and other functionality). I use mine to post adorable pictures of my nieces or to collect a set of pictures for Christie's family (I went with Christie) to see her adopted daughter Joo Mee while we were still in Korea.
But there are many other applications as well. To get the 411, see Educause's two page "7 things you should know about Flickr" description of what Flickr is all about and its educational applications. Or check out another Creative Craft video on Photo Sharing.
Library of Congress made a big splash this year when they uploaded more than 3000 photos to Flickr. They already had an online catalog of photos so why was this so exciting? For one thing, because of Flickr's social networking nature, the public could participate. They invited people to contribute "tags" (kind of like "subject headings" for books) and comments -- with the hope that LOC could learn more about these photos for their records. In just two days there were 650,000 views of photos, all 3,100 photos had been viewed and 420 pictures had comments. People loved it and what a rich collection of photos most of us would never have the chance to see in person....
Your task:
Easy -- search the vast Flickr collection or the smaller Library of Congress collection for pictures you find interesting. Post one to your blog.
Extra credit -- start your own Flickr/Picasa (or other) account and upload some photos to share. Put a link on your blog for us to peek at!
More Extra credit -- play around with the edit features they offer. Flickr partnered with Picnic this year which means that on Flickr I can crop and resize photos, add text, borders or other fun graphics (I was going to make this our Christmas card).
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Social Networking -- Boon or Bane?
Okay folks - it's time to try a social networking site. There are many many out there but you'd have to live under a rock not to have heard of these. Love 'em or hate 'em it's good to know what they're about. I think I'm on the older end of the demographic to live by these everyday. So are my friends -- sometimes there is a flurry of activity from them and then we all quiet down and fall back on email (email is SO dead to the young crowd). Like the Google gadgets, both of these sites allow third-party application developers to contribute which makes the potential offerings limitless.Here is Common Craft's explanation of what this is all about:
http://www.commoncraft.com/video-social-networking
The connections between academia and social networking sites are uncertain. Some think, "let's meet the students where they're at!" and others, "this is student space, let's not intrude". Some think it's just annoying fad and others that they are here to stay.
The Economist (the magazine) just hosted on online debate (Oxford style) about Social Networking. The proposition was:
The house believes that social networking technologies will bring large
[positive] changes to educational methods, in and out of the classroom.
Find the arguments, guest speakers and comments here-
http://www.economist.com/debate/index.cfm?action=summary&debate_id=3
Activity: Accept my invitation to Facebook and set up your profile. Poke around and interact with our group (or any of your friends you find online). What do you think?
Extra Credit: If you'd rather try MySpace or just want to try both, "friend" the Pierce College Library.
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