From the perspective of a foreign language teacher, Flickr presents several useful capabilities to the classroom but it takes some creativity in implementing the tool. Flickr is a "photo management and sharing application" that is accessible through the Internet which enables you to share photos both publicly and privately (Yahoo, 2009). The great part of about Flickr, from a teacher's standpoint, is that you can create a group within your Flickr account can set the level of control you have over the group members and the way they share photos. With such a level of control over the group, teachers could create project assignments and set parameters for the completion of that assignment through Flickr.
Through a group project that I worked on with some fellow Full Sail University students, I discovered the concept of a pictionary. This is simply an activity that builds students' vocabulary as they gather a list of vocabulary words and define each of those words with pictoral representations of their meaning. Flickr is a tool that would be perfectly suited to this activity. First, students can upload the photos that they will use to define each vocabulary world. Second, they can attach meaning to each photo by typing in a caption for the photo and even tagging this photo for their classmates to view and share. The process of tagging serves to further solidify a word's meaning. Tagging also forces students to make connections between other words and terms and even synonyms for each word.
For my own personal use, I could see Flickr as a tool to help build students vocabulary at varying levels of French. I might, for example, have students take words that are in the vocabulary section of their current textbook chapter and create a pictionary of those words. The students will be required to add captions that will be exclusively in French and the tags should involve at least one synonyms for each vocabulary term as well as one term that relates that photo to classmate's photo tags. This builds vocabulary, gives students a hands-on approach to learning, and presents an opportunity for collaboration with classmates in a unique and exciting way.
Over the next months, I plan to integrate this project, at least once, into my lesson plans and report on my successes and struggles. I am confident, though, that Flickr has the potential to be a tool that I would use in the classroom for a long time.
Resources
Yahoo. (2009). About Flickr. Retrieved from http://www.flickr.com/about/
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Awesome, Kim. This is a great idea and while I have read similar examples so far, you just gave me a great idea for my nine-year-old. We have been talking about learning Spanish. In December when things slow down - slightly, I am going to work with him to make a Spanish pictionary) Thank you.
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