Thing 5 – Discover Flickr

This week we will get to play and share images using Flickr, the predominant photo-sharing space on the Web.

Flickr is popular and powerful because it enables you to upload, manage, describe, and share your photographs with those you know and the larger world.  One of the best known features of Flickr is the ability for users to “tag” photos with words they associate with the image.  (If you use a tag to describe recent photographs of your vacation as “hawaii” you can see all the other publicly available photos that others have tagged as “hawaii” too!)

For this discovery exercise, take a good look at Flickr and discover what this site has to offer. Find out how tags work and what groups are.  (For this project, we have created a group pool called Boatwright Memorial Library for everyone to share photos they add to Flickr this week.  Laura has started the group pool with a picture of her cat.)

Discovery Resources:

Discovery Exercise:

In this discovery exercise, you have two options…

  1. Discover an interesting image in Flickr that you want to blog about.  Be sure to include either a link to the image or, if you create a Flickr account, you can use Flickr’s blogging tool to add the image in your post.  Another option you have for including images in your post is to use Blogger’s photo upload tool.      – OR –
  2. Create a Free account in Flickr and use one of the images Laura took relating to libraries, located at netfiles\Admin\Library\TechLearning\Photos for Thing 5 Flickr.  There are eight different images for you to chose from.  Select as many as you want to upload to your account and play with the “picnic” buttons at the top of the image (rotate, edit photo, send to group, etc.).  Tag at least one of the images “Boatwright” and mark it public.  Add one of your photos to the Boatwright Memorial Library Group.  Then create a post in your blog about your photo and experience.  Be sure to include the image in your post.  Once you have a Flickr account, you have two options for doing this: through Flickr’s blogging tool or using Blogger’s photo upload feature.

Explore and have fun using Flickr.  If you are interested in looking at other photo hosting sites, give these a try:

PS: A quick word about photo posting etiquette – When posting identifiable photos of other people (especially minors) is it advisable to get the person’s permission before posting their photo in a publicly accessible place like Flickr. Never upload pictures that weren’t taken by you (unless you have the photographer’s consent) and always give credit when you include photos taken by someone else in your blog.