Activity 10: Flickr

One of our campers this summer asked about a way to insert a slideshow gadget on her blog.  This is an option with Blogger, but you can't simply add photos you have saved on your computer.  You need to create a Flickr or Picasa photostream and access the pictures through the cloud.  Picasa used to link easily with our MVGmail accounts, but it doesn't anymore.  So for Activity 10, I decided to check out Flickr so that hopefully I can answer her questions at open lab this week!

Flickr seems like the kind of site where I could easily lose track of time browsing through photos.  I didn't let myself explore it much yet, since my goal was to figure out how to upload and share my own school pictures.  Once your account is created, you can upload pictures.  I like that you can change the privacy settings for each photo or as a batch.  You can create sets and collections, so it's easy to organize pictures by event or time of year, and you can archive photos into yearly collections.  Public photos can easily be embedded into Blogger, since you can connect Flickr to your Blogger account. 

I uploaded some of the photos I took of Sunnyside's Barnes & Noble Book Fair in February.  I wish I had brought a camera that day, but all I had was my iPhone - please excuse the poor quality!  I chose not to embed my photo set, since I'd rather not have the photos public.  I'd want to be sure to get parent permission before doing so (even though students aren't identified by name and mostly you just see the backs of their heads).  But there are also photos of Sunnyside Celebrities, teachers that came to read as part of the book fair.  I'd want to get their permission before posting their photos on my site as well. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/99918996@N06/sets/72157634952623196/

I think that Picasa WAS easier to use than Flickr, but this is our best bet for now.  Google is forcing people to switch to Google+, but our district has that feature turned off at this point.  Unless that changes, it's difficult to access old albums and virtually impossible to create new ones.  Picasa can still be downloaded as a software program, but it won't play nicely with Blogger.

Sharing photos is a nice way to communicate with families and share what's going on at school, especially if parents have to work and can't make it to field trips or other special events.  Flickr lets you create groups, so you can control who can view your photos.  This would be helpful for schools, since it allows us to protect student identities and only share pictures with specific people.