The people behind Flickr, the online photo sharing site, have gone into overdrive! They’ve just released some great tools for users which have a multitude of uses in the classroom as well.

I love Flickr. It’s a great source of inspiration and ideas for the classroom teacher, and it also allows me to have the vicarious pleasure of seeing other people’s worlds and experiences. And now, there are even more reasons to go pro… and to persuade your school to do the same! In the past few days the guys at Flickr have made a few new tools available that you might be interested in investigating. The first of these is the inclusion of picnik:

picnik

picnik is a rather nifty online picture editing site; think Photoshop and you’re in the right area. In fact, most of picnik’s detractors make the point that it isn’t as powerful as Photoshop but I think they’re missing the point. Picnik is free, it’s now built into Flickr, and it allows a classroom teacher to get his or her pupils doing basic photo manipulation without having to lay out hundreds of €s, £s or $s for the privilege. And let’s be honest, most of us just want to make basic fixes to photos and picnik has this covered with room to spare. For me, it’s a no brainer!

Stats

I love stats. Not the ones involving lots of numbers and obscure calculations but the ones that tell you how many people are visiting your blog (narcissistic I know… until you start to realise what a fantastic incentive they are to encourage a class to blog some more!). Well, now Flickr has joined in with its own stats service – Flickr stats. At the moment they are only available to Flickr pro users and you have to opt in to the service, but I’m already having fun seeing which of my photos are getting the most traffic. Again, it’s a tool that gives great information for classroom use (think graphs, charts, discussions on peoples’ tastes…)

Flickr uploader uploadr

The final tool to mention at the moment is the all new improved flickr uploader! Great if you’re uploading a load of photos, and the new version has a number of improvements which make sending large numbers of photos a breeze. (It’s also ‘Leopard’ ready if you’re a Mac user!)

Again, this allows you to have a class prepare their photos through a lesson and then upload them in one go.

For me, Flickr just keeps going from strength to strength. Going ‘pro’ was the main reason I ditched my .Mac account, and I just wish more Scottish Education Authorities would learn from the recommendation given by BECTA and the New Technologies team at Learning and Teaching Scotland when they say that Flickr is one of those tools that all schools can use to great effect!

[Cross-posted at Mr W’s Blogging Great Thing]

Categories: Digital Literacy, Technology
Tags: flickr, picnik, stats, tools, uploader