Flickr.com

Last summer my sister Kay introduced me to Ravelry, a knitting community online where both she and her daughter were registered. I played around on it some, mostly using it to find patterns and get ideas. After a few months, I decided that it would be good to use some of the functions available, especially as I modified patterns that I was working on and needed to make the matching item. I liked that I could add the notes to my project to add in my changes…no more lost sticky notes! I think it was in October when I finally decided to join the crafting community and set up a Flickr account so that I could add pictures to my projects. I found Flickr relatively straight forward to use, although it did take me a few minutes to go back in and find out exactly where I needed to be to add my tags. I had left those blank when I originally uploaded the photos. I will continue to use Flickr in my personal life, but I’m not sure that I will take the time to upload all of my photos. That will probably be done on as as-needed basis.

Flickr would be a great way to set up files for various writing prompts.

• Select photos to write about cause and effect. That’s difficult for my 3rd graders, so related sets could be added with increasing degrees of difficulty.
• Series of photos to aid in logical sequencing. This could be used for a variety of writing…narrative, informative, directions, etc.
• Fun, offbeat photos for students to write a narrative.
• Select photos to use when teaching the 6 traits.

I really don’t see a problem with using Flickr as mentioned above, but there would have to be limits set if it were to be used in different ways, which could include the students setting up their own accounts.