My Process and  Experiences with Flickr 

Photosharing with Flickr is the first web tool I wanted to explore as part of my inquiry project.  To date I have done very little with my digital photos other than upload them, and then get them printed off at London  Drugs as I still love hard copies of photos to put in photo albums.  So this was a great project for me to work on as now I will start organizing and sending groups of photos to family and friends this way while continuing to create "real" photo albums for my home.  With this project, like all of the projects I am exploring, my goal is to gain some personal experience with the tool so that eventually I can incorporate it into my teaching.  One way I could imagine incorporating Flickr into my teaching is by creating slideshows of fieldtrips or events we do at school to then be able to share with other classes,  kid's family members or other schools. David Jakes, an educational technology coordinator from Illinois suggests using Flickr to do things such as create presentations and slide shows, for virtual field trips, to illustrate poetry and to document school work. (Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms p. 104).



For the past few days I have been working away on teaching myself how to share my photos through using Flickr.  I just completed my first photosharing, sharing photos of my home before starting to fix it up and then after/in progress.  A few of my friends and family were really wanting some photos of my home as it's my first home I've ever bought and just bought it in November.  Prior to going onto the computer, I reread Chapter 7, Fun with Flickr in Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for the Classroom by Will Richardson.  Then I went into my house photos on my computer and organized the ones I wanted into a desktop folder labeled house photos and resized them so they were smaller.  Once this was done, I logged onto Flickr and started playing 

Steps I took once in Flickr:

1) sign up with yahoo email and password
2)set my screen name as amy's photos2012
3)clicked on choose photos and chose my desktop folder of photos labeled house photos
4)set the privacy page on "public"
5)clicked on upload photos

Once this was done I started exploring the available functions under "Organize Your Photos and Videos" at the top of the page.  I wanted to change the order so I could go from before to after shots.  I found I was able to do this, thinking that it would automatically save in my new order but it didn't (or perhaps there was a save button that I missed seeing).  Also two of my photos needed rotating, so I did that, but again back in the photostream this rotation had not been saved.  It was getting late, so I decided to delete my upload and start again fresh the next day.  To delete my photos I went back into "Organize and Create" dragged all the content and then under edit I clicked on delete.

So now today it's a new day so prior to starting with Flickr I went into my desktop house pictures file and rotated the two pictures that needed it.  Then I went through all the steps I learned the day before to upload my photos. Once my photos were uploaded I entered descriptions under all the photos, which I found very straightforward.  Like the day before when I went into organizing photos into a new order I could do it, but in the photostream they just automatically reverted to the order they had been in my initial house pictures folder.  Next I tried going into "Create a set" instead.  This allowed me to order my photos and save the photos in this order in a set called "before and in progress shots of my house."  Now when you go into amy's photos2012 my photo stream (including descriptions) is there in the order the photos were in my house folder, while at the right hand side my set called "before and in progress shots of my house" has the thumbnails in order, which you can click on to enlarge and see in order. Also, I wanted to see if the slideshow automatically worked or if I needed to do anything to make it work.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that when I clicked on slideshow, the slideshow was automatically shown.  Now that my photos were there the way I wanted them I didn't know how to share these photos in an hassle free way.

Steps for sharing my photos:

1) I went to the top right side of the screen and clicked on amy's photos2012 (in blue) which brought up my account page
2)I scrolled down to "your Flickr Web Address" and created an address:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/at2012-/
3)I emailed a few friends this address so that they can now see these photos

I hope you like my first Flickr project!