BWP: Chapter 7

Once again, I learned about a new technology tool. When first learning about Flickr, I figured that it was just a website that one would upload photos to, edit them, and could share them with their family and friends. Clearly I was greatly mistaken. Flickr not only allows you to post pictures and videos but grants you access to view others photos as well as comment on them, use them with their permission, as well as find pictures that are related to yours. The possibilities are truly endless. The reading also gave a few examples of how one might go about incorporating Flickr into their classroom, which I found to be incredibly useful. This reading showed me that sometimes you need discover the true capabilities of a tool before totally overlooking it. If I would've gone off of my main assumption of what I thought Flickr was, I'd be missing out on a great enhancement to my future classroom. This reading also has started to make me think how much more pride students would have in their work if their audience expanded beyond the walls of our classroom. Having people from all around the world view, comment, and even use students' work is such a beneficial experience.

There are a few things I plan to do after reading this chapter. First and foremost is to totally understand whatever it is I'm looking at. As stated earlier, what I thought Flickr was happened to be far away from it's capabilities. In order to see what can best serve the classroom, you need to know what it is. That's what I plan to do with any tools I happen to use in my future classroom. I want to stress to my students that people from all around the world actually care and are interested in what's going on in our classroom. They care about the work that they are doing and might even have helpful comments to aid us in our learning adventure. By allowing students to post their work on the Internet using tools like Flickr, they are connecting with people who they otherwise might not have known existed. And all because of using a simple tool. Using this type of technology allows us to give our students a diversity that we probably wouldn't be able to offer inside the normal classroom setting.