More Reasons to Love Flickr

Uploaded with Skitch!

As if I didn't love Flickr enough already... Yes, I use to upload and post images of happenings at school. Yes, I can send the link to inquiring parents and other teachers. Yes, I love flickr toys and have made an occasional magazine cover or two. However, it was only today that I realized how great it would be for digital storytelling.

As I was compiling my digital storytelling resources, I remembered how many times a student would say to me, "I don't know what to wri-ite" in a tiny sing-songy whiny voice. I would have to run through the whole litany of, "How about a birthday party? A Kennywood ride? The first day of school?" followed by a bunch of head-shaken nos. So, today, after uploading a bunch of photos from the first weeks of school and my road trip to Fallingwater yesterday, I came across photo after photo that sparked my memory of a variety of events: baking cookies when I almost burned the house down, having my hair braided in 68 braids, going through my grandma's button box, etc, etc.

Perhaps that by having students make collages of photos that spark a memory for them might be a great way to create a storybank of ideas. I copied photos (using the Creative Commons licensing) and pasted into a powerpoint slide and then "Skitched" an image of the slide...Took 10 minutes...most of the time spent weeding through pictures. I just might make this a recurring thing...There are that many cool photos on flickr.