Image Blogs in your classroom

Ever heard of Image sharing sites such as Flickr?  These are great sites that allow users to share, explore and interact with images.  Now take those images, put them together and "narrate" them and you have image blogs.

My next task in this Web 2.0 exploration was to explore image blogs, and through this task I was able to explore some amazing images.

I'd have to say, first off, that hands down, the #1 benefit that comes to mind is bringing viewers to places they may not normally be able to visit.

For example, say your class is exploring China, jump over to this FlickrBlog site, and you can view some amazing scenes that would be inaccessible for most students.

Or, you could explore some intense images about the Holocost at this Fliction tagged page

A great example of using the annotation feature on Flickr can be seen on this image.  This student created a great diorama of Jane Goodall's camp, but then used the annotation feature of Flickr to identify the different features on the image.

The next example of an image blog would be perfect for a science lesson.  This collection of images allows for so many possibilities to explore in a lesson.

One key to Flickr is to allow users to tag photos and join groups (and submit photos).  One such group is a collection of photos with Red in them.  Looking at these images makes me think about writing prompts and maybe some discussions on contrasting images and the power of color.

While exploring the different image blogs on the Flickr Blog site brought me to so many amazing images.  One in particular that I enjoyed was a short tip to Bumble Bee Arizona.

Another collection of amazing images was Urban exploration photos.

As I think about using this in the classroom many ideas come to mind.  I could see classrooms exploring the images to get unique views of new places.  I could see teachers identifying images for writing prompts. I could also see students creating an image blog to create a photo narrative.  Student could create a "day in the life" type blog that would give visuals to their lives.

So many great opportunities lie ahead for students to learn, share and collaborate.