Module 6

This module explores Web 2 photo sharing. The yahoo website Flickr was explored. The copyright of photos, videos, You Tube and text were also investigated. It was good to know that a small percentage of the work can be used for educational purposes. You Tube videos can be used for educational purposes but not for profit.

Students need to be made aware of Copyright laws. The Year 8 ICT, Year 9 and 10 students in IST last year were given information on Copyright laws in Australia. The students were directed to the Australian Copyright laws.  The Australian Copyright Council's website is  http://www.copyright.org.au/. Students can search for information about Copyright. All students had two lessons on this. The students answered questions on Copyright and discussed copyright in a forum. This was done using Moodle. Students signed in and the teacher could see their responses. Students were made aware about using music and images that were not theirs. The Year 9's entered Tropfest Junior, where students made movies. A lot of students obtained free Copyright music from various websites such as www.bearshare.com/free for their movies. The students were more knowledgeable about more websites that they had found for free music than I was.

Flickr is not new to me. I had used it in 2007 for my photos when I was working overseas. I still have the photos on Photostream in Flickr. Photos and videos can be tagged. The involves inserting a label under the photo so you can easily search for it. Tags are short for example, Naples pizza.

Flickr offers many photos to explore. There are photos of current events, galleries where you can find photos on a multitude of topics. You can start your own gallery on a topic or you can add to a gallery.
To share your own photos, you can make it public or private. You can share your photos with your friends and invite them using a guest pass, if they don't have a Flickr account.

Flickr is linked to social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Blogging, so you can set up direct connections to these websites with your photos. Flickr is user friendly as there are many ways to upload your photos. You can choose to upload your photos using the web uploader, the desktop uploader or you can use your mobile phone or Third Party Apps such as iPhoto or Picassa.

I like the map feature in Flickr where you upload your photos and there is a map of the world. I took some photos of Dinard, France and a map appeared about where this town is. Places is a favourite of mine where you can explore photos of countries around the world.

Flickr can also be used to make albums using Snapfish and other things such as canvas prints of your favourite photos. 

Creative commons is where people have contributed photos to share for all to use. Creative commons works to increase sharing and collaboration around the world. One person can start a photo gallery and others can add to it. Also one person can start a Google doc and ask others to contribute.

The questions asked in this module will now be answered:

1. What are content filters? 
2. What is safe search?
3. What are tags?
4. How do I share photos in a group?

Content filters are filters that block certain content, information in email, phrases, inappropriate tagging of photos. Content filters block unnecessary spam from entering into your email and protects users of the website from objectonable content. It enables people to have a website where they can share their ideas and photos freely with freedom from abuse and viruses.
Content filters in Flickr also distinguish between types of files, such as  JPEG files, MP3, MP4, m4v, (video file) AVI (video file).
Content filters allow the users of Flickr to be able to work together around the world, as something that may be offensive to your culture may not be offensive to another culture. If your work is for a global audience, then your content should be aimed at your audience and it should be acceptable. For example, for most cultures except the Amazon Pygmies who would most probably not access to the Internet, it would not be appropriate to have full frontal nudity.
Furthermore, content filters apply specifically to your log in ID in Flickr. Certain countries restrict content that they consider "safe". So what is safe in one country may not necessarily be considered safe for another.

A safe search is a feature that Flickr has that allows you to control what turns up when you use Flickr to search. Everyone who uses Flickr has safe search on.

Tags are key words that you can add to a photo. It makes it easier for people to find a subject. Below are some examples of tags that you can add to your photos. Below are the most popular tags according to Flickr recently.



Sharing photos is quite easy on Flickr. You need to invite the person to join Flickr. If they don't want to join, they can have a guest pass to view your photos on photostream.

I have explored other photo sharing websites. Cool Iris is one of them. Cool Iris allows your photos to be viewed in 3-D along a wall and you can zoom in and out. The web address is www. cooliris.com. I joined this website in July 2010 and thought it was good. It now has other features such as sharing with Flickr and sharing on your iPhone and Android phone. You can also show videos as well.


There are other phone photo sharing software that is available and you can use Flickr on your mobile phone whether it is an Android, iPhone, Windows phone.
 
I use WhatsApp for sending information and photos and movies instantly to people around the world. I also use Hotmail to send photos and documents that are put into smaller files automatically before they are sent.



There is another photo website that is free that I have received photos from via email from my brother. It is called Photo Shake. You can see the video on this phone app by viewing
http://youtu.be/OlBnIScAgmw 
Photoshake has other features like borders and adding colour to different sections of the borders as well. You can change the colour of a border to highlight a photo. Photoshake is available for Android phones as well as Blackberry phones nad you can download Photoshake for PC's.

I think the students could use this program for taking photos and then making a collage of them. They can insert the photos onto Prezi, Glogster and also onto iMovies and i Stop Motion and also use them in Animoto and Movie Maker.




Animoto is a great place that you can share your photos and make a short free 30 second video using the preset themes and music. Students love using this program for sharing photos as well. The link for animoto is http://animoto.com/

Students can use Flickr to share photos with each other of the food that they make in my Food Technology when they are working on a project together.

I think that students share a lot of their photos using their phones, so Flickr for mobiles is good for students to use. Students need to learn how to transfer the photos on to their computers. I have taught students how to use a card reader and a lot of students already know how to transfer photos.

In my Year 10 Food Technology class and my Year 11 Hospitality class, the students make a folio of food that they have cooked every lesson. They take a photo of their food and then present the photo with instructions on equipment used, Work Health and Safety and their own evaluations. Most of my students take photos of their food using their phones or using their Macbooks. I think the Photoshake free app would be good to show different meals cooked. For example, today we did stewing and the students made stewed beef, apple crumble with stewed apples and ratatouille. The three dishes could be shown on Photoshake and they can share their photos as well with each other.

I think that Flickr can be used for researching photos as there are many the students can use, especially in the Creative Commons photo sharing feature of Flickr. Furthermore, Flickr is safe to use and students can trust the website will not contain offensive content.