Tactics - Image Sharing

Introduction

'How might image sharing contribute to teaching/learning and what might these contributions be?

Here are a couple of approaches that may be helpful in addressing these questions.

1) Connecting project tasks with important learning experiences

Glen Bull and Lynn Bell edit a book sponsored by the International Society for Teacher Education (2005) explaining how the use of digital images can be integrated into many K-12 core content areas. While our focus on image sharing and the participatory web must take a narrower focus, there is a good deal of overlap in our thinking.

Bull, Bell and coauthors propose that it is useful to understand the contribution of images to the teaching/learning process in terms of phases. Students:

1. acquire images,


2. analyze images,


3. create image-based works, and


4. communicate ideas and understandings.

This series of stages like many such models (e.g., Writing to Learn) assumes benefits both in the development of content understanding (whatever the focus of the photo sharing project) and secondary benefits in the development of skills associated with implementation of the project (e.g., technology skills, problem-solving skills).

Connect to standards

Bull and Bell make the effort to demonstrate how well the phases they identify might be mapped to NET-S standards. Their analysis was completed before the "refresh" of the NET-S standards, but the connections are still evident.

1. Acquire - Research and Information Fluency - Students apply digital tools to gather, evaluate, and use information. (Standard 3)


2. Analyze - Critical Thinking, Problem-Solving & Decision-Making - Students use critical thinking skills to plan and conduct research, manage projects, solve problems and make informed decisions using appropriate digital tools and resources. (Standard 4)


3. Create - Creativity and Innovation - Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes using technology. (Standard 1)


4. Communicate - Communication and Collaboration - Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others. (Standard 2)

Flickr Tasks Mapped to Learning Activity Categories

If you have reviewed the information we have provided on using photo sharing tools, you might attempt to map specific activities to these phases. What applied activities are involved in the phases? We prefer a little different and simpler way of describing the activities of photo sharing and you may find the exercise we suggest a little easier with our system.

Collect

• Generate a plan/goals


• Take and upload images


• Locate Creative Commons images appropriate to goals

Process

• Describe


• Tag


• Geotag

Communicate

• Organize into sets


• Invite participants via groups


• Comment

As is typically the case of such models in practice, what begins as a proposed sequence of activities ends up being iterative. Attempting to engage in the processes of each stage often reveals deficiencies causing the "author" to return to an earlier stage to do more work. The stages also tend to represent artificial divisions. For example, taking images also involves processing. The photographer examines the environment to identify potential images that convey a specific feeling or serve as a good representation of a concept. Reviewing the comments offered by others and perhaps adding new comments of your own represents additional processing of important ideas.

2) Consider how images are useful in your content area

How is it that we as teachers or learners might take advantage of image sharing? There may be several ways of responding to this question. One approach, which we will get to, might take advantage of the experiences of others. In other other words, what have other teachers/learners already done with photo sharing. Perhaps from these examples we might identify a strategy that could generalize to our own circumstances.

Here is a different strategy I would like to encourage you try. Consider your own situation. How might you benefit from access to images? How might the search, storage, or annotation capabilities of an image sharing site be beneficial? In other words, what are some image-related learning challenges and how might image sharing possibly address such challenges?

Personal reflection on educational use of images.