I have been wanting to explore Shutterfly for some time, but because I pay for a Flickr account and have spent considerable time with Picasa, it seemed like just one more version of what I have been recommending. In the back of mind what I knew was unique about Shutterfly was that while it was a photo sharing site it also offered a way to offer general web content. This struck me as an important distinction.
A few days ago I came across this strange post on MarketWatch (strange because MarketWatch is not exactly the place I search for ideas for the classroom). The business oriented post that includes the present stock market value of Shutterfly explained Shutterfly’s effort to offer classroom web sites. The article explains that parents would like to see images from the classroom and from student field trips, but providing such images is difficult because of security concerns. So, Shutterfly has offered a version of the tool allowing the creation of web sites to meet this and other classroom to home communication needs. The classroom web sites are by invitation only which is the way the teacher or a parent volunteer controls access. While Shutterfly’s main business model is printing user photographs in various formats (images, calendars, photo books) and photos are clearly what Shutterfly does well, the template and modular-based approach makes it relatively easy to create an impressive site.
Main web page
Shutterfly album
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