Flickr is popular web based photo sharing tool and was one of the earlier applications to be referred to as part of “Web 2.0.” Flickr allows users to upload photos to the web where they can be shared with friends or the Internet at large. If you have any interest in locating images, having your students collaborate with images, or sharing your own images, Flickr might be for you.
Beyond simply being a way to share images on the Internet, Flickr includes tools that allow people to comment on photos, add notes to photos, and even “tag” photos as belonging to different categories. “Tagging” is a common feature in Web 2.0 technology: tags are keywords that you can assign to an item to help identify its contents and group it with similar items. With Flickr you can tag photos based on subject, people in the photo, the event they correspond to, or any other category that might be important to you. The nice thing about tags is that you can tag an item with as few or as many keywords as you want. Tags make it easy to create your own organizational system that makes sense to you.
Flickr also incorporates social networking features in which your “contacts” can receive updates when you post new photos. You can also create or join groups and “photo pools.” Instructors who are interested in using Flickr with their students to share and collaborate on photos should be sure to check out the groups feature. Groups make it easy to collect everyone’s work in a single location and can also be made private from the rest of Flickr.
Even if you are not interested in using Flickr to post images of your own or having your students post images, Flickr can be an invaluable resource for finding images for use in instruction. The next time you are building that PowerPoint presentation and need an image to help convey an idea or introduce a topic, check Flickr. Because users tag their photos, Flickr can be a powerful tool for locating images on a wide range of subject matters. Flickr has even recently reached an agreement with the Library of Congress to post thousands of images from their collection. Another nice feature is that Flickr allows you to specifically search for photos with a CreativeCommons license, so you can locate images that the photographer has already granted permission for use.
Like many other Web 2.0 tools, Flickr makes use of RSS which can allow you to subscribe to Flickr pages of friends or colleagues. You could also use RSS as an easy way to include your latest photos on your blog or website. You’ll notice that RSS comes up again and again with Web 2.0 tools as a way to track new content or incorporate content into other place on the web. For more info, check out our earlier post on RSS .
A good place to get started with online photo sharing would be to visit the Flickr website and try locating images you might wish to use. After that, you may wish to set up an account to experiment with uploading and sharing your own photos. For an example of a Flickr page related to UMass, check out the Learning Commons Flickr page.
Check out these additional resources to learn more about how you might use Flickr:
7 Things You Should Know About Flickr (PDF)
Video: Online Photo Sharing in Plain English