Flickr and the Use of Pictures
Using pictures (static multimedia material according to Mayer (468)) in an English lesson at school is not uncommon, it is a rather familiar tool that all of us know from their own time at school. But using pictures on the internet, having an own "picture-page" with own photographs is a different thing.
The tool Flickr, which is a photo-community on the internet, makes use of the internet as a large source for pictures that can be shared. There are pictures concerning many different topics which can be quite useful.
The good thing for school is that you can set up an own flickr account (which is quite easy by the way), either one account for the whole class or one account for each student. Then students and /or the teacher can upload pictures.
What is it useful for?
First of all, you can use pictures which show English in the daily life taken by the students in oder to create consciousness of English in our daily lives. This is a quite useful aspect as students would realize that English is not just a subject at school but rather a language which influences our life. This use of Flickr is simple and has a big effect which I personally like as it can be included in class 5 already.
Another useful thing is that you can use these pictures in order to describe these pictures and therefore to practise the students' oral English skills and, if they write it down, their writing skills as well. You could also create a picture story or use pictures in order to visualize new vocabulary. Mayer (473) states that "vocabulary words learned with picture annotations were better retained than those with textual annotations". You should keep in mind that the mode of testing should not differ significantly from the way students learn new words. You can also practise certain grammatical structures such as the simple present or the present progressive with the help of pictures.
There are quite a lot of good ideas in addition ot the ones mentioned above, for which Flickr can be used at school. Keep in mind that you can always change ideas or modify certain activities. As there is a connection to their reality, students may not get the feeling that they are actually "working" for school. It is a nice way to combine learning with fun and a reference to the students' life. It is clear that the teacher can also work with pictures that have not been taken from the students, but nevertheless the effect remains nearly the same in my point of view.
The basic difference between using printed pictures as teachers used to do it years over years and using pictures online from a photo-community is the interactivity and individuality. Students can always comment on pictures. The availibility is always given and students or the teacher can easily add new pictures for a new topic. It is a modern tool which is "closer" to the students.
One possible game you can play is the so-called "Five Card Flickr Story" which you can access under www.tr.im/fivecard. All you need is a computer and an internet connection. The computer selects five random pictures for you. You just click on five images you like to have for your story. Then you have to write a short story which connects all these pictures in a senseful way that can be serious or humorous, depening on the pictures. Instead of making the computer choose the pictures you can also do that as the teacher or make the students do it on their own.
All in all I like the idea of using pictures and doing it with Flickr is a nice idea as well. What you exactly do is quite open as there are many different ways of integrating Flickr into the classroom. Especially for an English classroom, pictures can be very useful.
The tool Flickr, which is a photo-community on the internet, makes use of the internet as a large source for pictures that can be shared. There are pictures concerning many different topics which can be quite useful.
The good thing for school is that you can set up an own flickr account (which is quite easy by the way), either one account for the whole class or one account for each student. Then students and /or the teacher can upload pictures.
What is it useful for?
First of all, you can use pictures which show English in the daily life taken by the students in oder to create consciousness of English in our daily lives. This is a quite useful aspect as students would realize that English is not just a subject at school but rather a language which influences our life. This use of Flickr is simple and has a big effect which I personally like as it can be included in class 5 already.
Another useful thing is that you can use these pictures in order to describe these pictures and therefore to practise the students' oral English skills and, if they write it down, their writing skills as well. You could also create a picture story or use pictures in order to visualize new vocabulary. Mayer (473) states that "vocabulary words learned with picture annotations were better retained than those with textual annotations". You should keep in mind that the mode of testing should not differ significantly from the way students learn new words. You can also practise certain grammatical structures such as the simple present or the present progressive with the help of pictures.
There are quite a lot of good ideas in addition ot the ones mentioned above, for which Flickr can be used at school. Keep in mind that you can always change ideas or modify certain activities. As there is a connection to their reality, students may not get the feeling that they are actually "working" for school. It is a nice way to combine learning with fun and a reference to the students' life. It is clear that the teacher can also work with pictures that have not been taken from the students, but nevertheless the effect remains nearly the same in my point of view.
The basic difference between using printed pictures as teachers used to do it years over years and using pictures online from a photo-community is the interactivity and individuality. Students can always comment on pictures. The availibility is always given and students or the teacher can easily add new pictures for a new topic. It is a modern tool which is "closer" to the students.
One possible game you can play is the so-called "Five Card Flickr Story" which you can access under www.tr.im/fivecard. All you need is a computer and an internet connection. The computer selects five random pictures for you. You just click on five images you like to have for your story. Then you have to write a short story which connects all these pictures in a senseful way that can be serious or humorous, depening on the pictures. Instead of making the computer choose the pictures you can also do that as the teacher or make the students do it on their own.
All in all I like the idea of using pictures and doing it with Flickr is a nice idea as well. What you exactly do is quite open as there are many different ways of integrating Flickr into the classroom. Especially for an English classroom, pictures can be very useful.
The Five Card Flickr Story - That is how it could look like
