BP9_Flickr

As I get more and more comfortable with my Mac I have now completely switched to only using iPhoto and iMovie for all of my professional and personal photos and video.  I’ve used a few web tools in the past to share my photos, but Flickr is the recommended website from the iPhoto program, so I decided to explore it further with this assignment.  Flickr has a lot to offer.  You can share your photos with family and friends, colleagues and students, and many more.  You can also make prints, photo books, and much more.  I am enjoying exploring Flickr and coming up with many ideas to use this web 2.0 tool with my classroom.

One of the hardest things to accomplish as an art teacher is sharing our student’s artwork.  Along with Artsonia (the largest children’s museum online) a web tool I’ve explored in one of my past blogs, I would like to use Flickr.  Students of any age and level can share their artwork with the friends, family members, teachers and administrators.  I can use this tool to update parents with the work their students have produced throughout the class. 

Many parents are anxious to see what their students are working on and many projects unfortunately don’t make it home.  Whether it be that its to difficult to transport, in a special place to be revealed at the annual art show, or the student isn’t responsible enough to take it home, now you can be prepared to share your student’s work at any time.  It can be used to communicate to the parents their student’s positive or negative classroom progress, behavior and actual work and show them proof by the picture and feedback on exactly how your students are doing.   

An additionally great feature on Flickr is the: Create a Canvas feature.  With this feature Flickr turns your photos into art.  This feature is great for my art classroom and a perfect way to boost my student's confidence to make multiple copies of their art allowing them to share their favorite art pieces with many people, while keeping the original to cherish for themselves.