Like many of you, I loves me my Flickr.
What’s not to love about free photo sharing (or investing in a 25$ pro account)? This week I’ve been thinking about all the great ways to use Flickr with your class, and I’ve come up with my top five. Here they are, in no particular order:
1. Teaching Art History through Notes: Flickr is a great way to open up an online conversation about art, and the Notes function allows you to comment on a selected feature or section of your image. In this example, you can see the various comments about specific elements of the Merode Altarpiece as you mouse over the image. More general comments about the piece are contributed at the bottom. Notice that both the notes in the photo and the comments below are contributed from a variety of participants. You can add notes by clicking the “add note” icon above the image.
2. Group Challenge: In a recent post, I highlighted the Bears in Ill-Fitting Hats Flickr pool. Groups allow you to collaborate in the creation of a themed photo set. This could be a great project, allowing students from all around the world to participate in a themed project in whcih they can compare and contrast their results.
3. Publish: There are quite a few third party companies waiting to help you “do more” if you’ve got a little extra in your budget. You can make books, photocubes, posters, canvas prints, cards. Why not have a Catalog of your Art show? If you’re looking for some free options, Big Huge Labs can help you transform your Flickr photos into jigsaw puzzles, badges, movie posters, pallets, lolcats, and more. You can create slideshows or add speech bubbles. Some of the stuff is more fun than educational, but you know what? I’m ok with that.
4. Photoblog: I’m in love with B_Zedan’s Daily Sculp Photoset in which she photoblogs her daily ‘sculpture sketch’. Pictured here is the uber-cool 6 Saints of Steampunk which can be seen here dancing on the face of a quarter. Zedan also uses Flickr to create very useful art tutorials like this on how to make a monotype print.
5.Collect, Collaborate, or Collage: Using the advanced search in Flickr, you can find images that are tagged with the Creative Commons license. The creators of these images want you to use their images to mix-up, mash-up, and use to create new art. You’ll probably also find some great reference material here.
Finally, (and this one is a bonus) Paulthewineguy has a Flickr Set that helps explain art history for geeks. If that photo set alone doesn’t make Flickr one of the most useful art history resource sites on the internet, I don’t know what is.
Cross-posted at The Carrot Revolution
