Flickr and Google Earth

Flickr

Using a photo sharing site with my class had never occurred to me before being introduced to Flickr. David Jakes wrote that using Flickr helps to “promote and build visual literacy skills with students,” (http://www.jakesonline.org/using_flickr.pdf) which is, frankly, not something I’ve ever aspired to do. This opens up a new area in which to review my pedagogy. I was forced to ask the questions, “What is visual literacy? Am I preparing my students to be visually literate?” The answers respectively are, I don’t know and no.

Wikipedia defines visual literacy as, “the ability to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image. Visual literacy is based on the idea that pictures can be “read” and that meaning can be communicated through a process of reading.” (2010) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_literacy ) So, if images can be read the same as words, am I teaching my students how to interpret images? I am asking them to suss out the author’s message by looking for clues and forming connections like we would with text? Am I teaching them to look for perspective or bias based on what is and isn’t presented? Certainly, if visual literacy involves the interpreting of information presented in images it must also involve the representation of each student’s own information in their creation of images, just as it would with their writing.  Students are inundated with images almost by the minute, from all sorts of media. One could argue that they are faced with images more often than text. Visual literacy skills are seeming more and more important to me.

As with so much in my academic and professional life, I’m experiencing a coming together of pieces, like pasting together a collage of disparate images to create a surprisingly cohesive whole. Visual literacy and writing, problem solving and graphics, visual story telling and world and space travel. There is more than a casual link here.

Starting with familiar territory, I am reminded of the link we make between imagery and reading comprehension in my school district. We teach students to create images in their heads as they are reading, like a running slide show illustrating the words they read. We do this so that the words students read translate to something real. David Jakes’ connections between the text of Carl Sandberg’s poem Chicago and images found on Flickr are a perfect example of creating comprehension by linking text and pictures. Perhaps this is something my students could do with their own text. In addition, I often ask students to draw simple sketches as part of their pre-writing activities. At a recent professional development presentation, a group of us were encouraged to have our students sketch, share what they’ve sketched, and then revisit their sketches with an eye to adding sensory details. (Coaching cards were provided to help us flush out our ideas and would also be provided for students. Here’s a link to a site where you can view the cards http://smartlearning.ca/pdfs/SusanClose_orderform_plain.pdf . The link takes you to an order form. I’m not trying to sell anything – I wouldn’t get anything out of it anyway. This is just the only picture I could find). All of this would be done before the students put pencil to paper. So, I’m already using imagery in my classroom, if not fully promoting and building visual literacy skills. Using Flickr seems like the next big step in helping my students interpret images and use them to create understanding or strengthen their projects.

Professional Use

Thinking of visual literacy, the first application for Flickr that makes sense to me is to search for pictures that relate to topics we’re studying and having students write journal entries about them. Initially, I would use the photos as a way to trigger ideas and as a focus for our learning to add details to writing. Eventually, however, my hope is that I could stretch my students to view with a question in mind, such as “Why take a picture of this? Why from this angle/perspecitive? Is the author trying to convince us of something?” Thus, we would bring higher visual literacy skills into play.

We are currently studying Space in Science. (You can view the prescribed learning outcomes (PLOs) for all subjects and grades by visiting the BC Ministry of Education’s website at http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/irp/gc.php and clicking on the appropriate grade. For Space, click on grade 3 and scroll down to Space.) I went on to Flickr and found some wonderful pictures that relate to Space. They are in my gallery titled Space. Some are more conceptual and others are more realistic. You can view these images by visiting Mrs. Ox on Flickr and going to my Space gallery.

As an aside, in the past, I’ve had students visit NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day website at http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html and write journal entries based on the pictures there. The fun thing about this website is that students can search the archive for the image associated with their birthday this year or for their birth date or for any other significant date. The comments are informative, although the language does tend to be a little difficult for elementary students.

In Social Studies, we are starting the year with a unit on Geography. The application of visual literacy skills to geography is probably one of the most obvious, in that students need to understand that every dot, colour, ripple, symbol and space on a map means something, as does what the map creator decides to include and not include. Each year that I teach geography, I require my students to learn by heart the names and locations of the provinces, territories and capital cities in Canada. I know that this type of rote learning falls low on the hierarchy of mind expanding activities, but I really feel that students should have this knowledge as a jumping off point for their studies. I decided that as a study aid I would provide the students with an annotated map of Canada. Students can look at the map, state the place name and move the cursor over the box to check if they are right. Students then have control of error at their disposal and I’m hoping that the novelty factor will make them more interested in studying. To see the map, go to my photostream on Flickr and click on Map of Canada 2.  

In addition, students need to use maps and globes to locate the traditional territory of Aboriginal groups that we study. In the past, I’ve pointed this out to students as I introduce each group. This year, however, I’m going to have them annotate a map on Flickr to outline the areas. This map will be saved and referred to as we look at each group. To view a link to the map I will give students and the one I’ve used as an example, go to Mrs. Ox’s photostream and click on Map of Canada and outline map of Canada.

Richardson suggests a number of applications on Flickr, of which two jump out at me as being particularly useful in the future. First, I love the idea of creating virtual fieldtrips. One of the most memorable projects I did during my undergrad years was a report I put together for Earth Science 101. The entire class got together on a Saturday and drove out towards Squamish. We stopped at geologically significant spots and took pictures and notes, then later used them to make books. Obviously, if I was to assign a similar project now to my students, I would use Flickr for creating slide shows instead of books, specifically because students could share photos and select the best ones as a class to annotate and to put together into a virtual fieldtrip. The opposite also holds true. I can put together a virtual field trip for students so that we can ‘visit’ somewhere that is beyond our means.

The second great idea was to invite people from around the world to comment on our projects, especially those who are experts in certain fields. My students will be creating Spaceology books in Science this term. A colleague of mine mentioned once in passing that creating an ‘ology’ book, like the popular Dragonology  or Egyptology books, as a class was a fun and collaborative way of having students demonstrate their knowledge on a subject. The idea is that each student picks a planet or other object in the solar system and creates a page in a running story, started by a prompt that I provide. Each page also contains facts about the planet or object and informative illustrations. My idea is to photograph the pages when they are done and upload them to Flickr, thereby creating a digital copy of the book. (Incidentally, this also solves the problem of who gets to take the book home. No one and everyone does: the hard copy stays with the class and the digital copy is available for everyone.) My hope is to invite people with a specialty in Space Science to view the books and provide feedback. That is, if I can find someone and if anyone is interested. It strikes me as such an unselfish and nurturing thing, to mentor children that you have no vested interest in. I hope that’s what we encounter.

The Nuts and Bolts

Signing up for Flickr was easy, as was uploading pictures from my hard drive. I have, in the past, sent photos electronically to London Drugs for developing, and the process is similar. Instructions on annotating pictures were found by searching the blog attached to Flickr. In less than half and hour I signed up, posted a few wedding pictures and tagged them. If I can remember to take pictures in the first place, (my house is shockingly devoid of art and family photographs I have to admit) I will definitely use this site. When our last computer crashed, many of our pictures were lost, so I absolutely love the fact that my pictures will be safe here. I also love the privacy settings. I set up my account so that only people I allow will be able to see my pictures. Not that I have anything to hide, but this will prevent inappropriate posts.

Once I decided on a couple of projects, I needed to figure out how to do them. I found a couple of sites on line that I could download map outlines from and I saved them as jpeg files in My Photos and uploaded them to Flickr. Simple. However, then I had to decide how to allow my students to access these maps. I decided that I would have students set up their own accounts. I was half way through a parental permission letter when it occurred to me to double check the personal information needed to set up an account. Sure enough, it asks for a birth date, because children under 13 are not allowed to set up accounts. So, I have to allow them to access my account, which meant that I had to go back and change my password to match our student log-in password in the computer lab. I’m admittedly uncomfortable about allowing my students to access this site, but have decided that the pros out weigh the cons. It was suggested to me that I change the password after every class to lock out students when we’re not working on the site together. I haven’t decided if I will do that or not and am open to comments. Regardless, to allow students to annotate the maps, I will simply upload enough copies for the class and tag them with each student’s name so that we can all work from one account.

Personal Use

My initial account was set up without a clear intention for use. I posted some personal pictures and uploaded some pictures for use with the class. As I played with Flickr, a clearer picture of what I wanted to use it for came to mind, and I know now that I will use this first account for work and will create a second account for personal use. I decided, however, to leave a few innocuous personal pictures of myself up on the account for the first while to spark a discussion with my students about what we should and should not post. When time allows, I am anxious to upload as many pictures as I can and to also try to resurrect some photos that I saved on my old cell phone and thought that I had lost forever.

Google Earth

I had heard of Google Earth long before being asked to look at it for Education 501. I’m sure it’s what NORAD uses to run their tracking Santa program that we watch every year. If not, then it’s a program very similar to it. Anyway, this was the perfect time to be asked to look at it as a tool in the classroom. I’m teaching geography right now and am so excited to use it.
On a personal note, one of my goals in life is to travel the world. Maybe not all at once, but over the course of many summers. I am not the kind of traveler that likes to go some place quiet and relax. I like to sight see and experience things. So far, the list of places I’ve traveled is quite small: western Canada (from Vancouver Island to Winnipeg), the west coast (BC to Carlsbad, California) and Las Vegas. I plan to drive all the way through to the other side of Canada one day, as well as drive through each state and fly to and tour Europe, South America, and parts of Asia and Africa. Google Earth is very exciting to me because I can ‘fly’ to different destinations and check out the sites I can’t wait to see. I spent a lot of time initially checking out the Nascan lines, the Eiffel Tower, Stonehenge, the CN tower, etc. I’m hooked. I’m sure my students will be, too.

What I found most useful was the thumbtack option, which allowed me to pinpoint specific points on a map. I was then able to annotate the thumbtacks, organize them into a folder and create a slide show. The search function allows me to ‘fly’ to places quickly, so I can add them to my tours.

In class this term, I’m going to introduce Google Earth by having the students take my virtual tour of the community surrounding the school. Then I’m going to have them fly to their houses to see where they live in relation to the school and other amenities. In addition, I’ve annotated the thumbtack on our school to ask, “What’s different in this picture?” The picture on Google Earth is about 4 years old, so some key features of the school are missing. This should open up a discussion about how the neighborhoods have changed.

The PLOs in Social Studies state that I need to teach the students about oceans, continents and hemispheres this year. What better way than to have them create a world tour themselves? Here’s what I’m thinking:

1) Students pick a country on each continent, except for Antarctica.
2) Students do some research to find an interesting or significant city or landmark in that country. Using the steps in the inquiry process, students will then find at least two interesting facts about this city or landmark.
3) Students will use the fly to function to find their city or landmark, and then the thumbtack function to mark it.
4) Using the annotation function, students will write:

The name of the landmark or city

Where the landmark or city is found (country, continent and hemispheres)

The facts they’ve found out through their research

5) Students will then create tours out of their cities or landmarks and share them with the class. While students are looking at other student’s tours, they can explore the pictures that pop up near the sites.
It is my hope that students will find this an exciting and fun alternative to the mapping posters that we do each year, which always turn out to be more colouring than research anyway.