Global Teacher - WEB 3.0 Community and Research Project

I’ve just started using a great new tool for student learning, revision and assessment. It’s called “Voicethread” and it allows registered users unlimited free use for educational purposes. You can quickly and easily upload images (either from your own computer, Flickr or other copyright free sources) and anyone can add comments as text or as a voice recording. It does not require you to download any software and you don’t need to fiddle with sound files - it’s as easy as talking into a microphone! Students can easily register individually or a teacher can add alternate identities to their own account. To maintain student privacy I asked our students to upload an avatar image (created with assistance from our IT guru, Anne M.) and only use their first names.

 I think it’s uses are only limited by your imagination - so far, I have taken photos of my student’s water cycle posters and asked each of them to annotate each of the labelled processes. This revealed that many had not understood the terms - condensation, precipitation, transpiration and percolation. This tool enables the teacher to individualise learning as you can listen to the student’s comment and respond in your own time. I have also used it as a review of our science unit “Separating Mixtures”. I took photos of each stage in the process of separating a mixture of iron filings, rice, sand and salt and also took pictures of distillation equipment and a separating funnel. Students were asked to describe what was happening in each stage of the process.

The third project I have created is one about Australian Animals  - My students will write a short script about one of the pictured animals and their structural, functional and behavioural adaptations. A year 7 science teacher in New York is collaborating with me on this one - his students will talk about american animals and each class will design a camouflage to enable up-close research on a specific animal from the other student’s country. So they will need to understand the physical features, functional characteristics and behavioural traits that enable each animal to survive in their respective environments.

I think it would be a great tool to use for poetry - students choose images, write a poem and then read the poem. It could be used for art appreciation, telling children’s stories, acting out comic strips, history projects, biographies….. great for students who prefer not to put pen to paper ( I have a few of those!) and some who need to practise their ‘public’ speaking in a safe environment.

Swim Carnival (Hawkesdale College P12, 2007) (c)

Flickr is one of my favorite websites on the net. It has taken my personal interests in vintage camera, digital and film photography and pushed it to new levels that I didnt even dream existed. But it is more than a mere photo album online.

Drawings, computer illustrations, video, animations, photographs and other types of media can be uploaded. It can ‘processes’ your images into several sizes that can be copied and pasted into any blog or internet forum via HTML code. You can add friends and contacts to your list, which allows you to view(via thumbnail links) five of their new uploads at a time. It also allows you to comment on their images (or anyones images for that matter) that you wish. You can join groups that allow you to ‘post’ your images into their ‘pools’ so that they are visible to an even wider audience.The groups have discussion forum pages that cover questions and answers as well as heaps of useful information regarding how to take a better image, how to use photoshop, debates about ‘issues’ affecting the group, how to repair your camera, and occasionally little competitions and ‘events’ to extend your artistic ability with the camera.

So where do we start?

I am assuming that anyone reading this has already signed up. Please resize your photos to 691 x 518 pixels in your image software. Its a good decent size and uploads quickly. To upload a photo after you have signed in, the first page you should see is your homepage on Fickr:

Go to the link I have underlined in red and click. It will then load this page:

I have a bad internet connection at home so I will show you the basic uploader, otherwise follow the link: Choose photos and videos and follow the links. It is that easy.

If your net connection is slow click : PSSST - looking for our basic uploader at the very bottom of the page. Click and it will take you here:

Click: Browse next to the first box. and find the image you want to upload. I keep a folder on my desktop specifically for Flickr uploads. After resizing I save them to the folder and find that it keeps them conveniently in the one place and easy to find. It is at this page you can set your privacy settings, and add tags. It is also possible to do this later so I tend to skip this option and go straight to the upload button. You should see this page.

When it is finished uploading you will see a page that prompts you again to give the image tags and titles (Batch organising) again I would skip this step as you can change it in the photos own page. From here if you click: You on the toolbar it will take you to your album where the image has been uploaded. Now the next installment of this blog will go into how to title, and tag your images, also how to add a description and how to find and add it to a group pool.