The 365 photos challenge

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Seems people are taking up the 365 photos challenge on flickr – committing to posting one photo per day for a whole year. Why, you ask? Well, that’s what I asked myself too. Why would you want to commit to more tasks on top of the already toppling mountain of daily tasks?  In my usual contradictory way (contradicting myself usually) I found myself joining 3 of these groups which just means I upload the same photo a day to each of these groups. Just in case I miss out on the interesting photos, since different people will be found in each of the groups. The 3 groups are Twitter 365 project; 2009/365photos; 365/2009.

Just today I followed Jo McLeay’s lead and decided to give my 365 photostream a home, so here’s the link to my new blog. If you look at the twelve days of photos, you’ll realise why I’ve been absent from blogging for so long – lots of things to do in the physical world.

Just a few thoughts. As usual. Apart from the fun factor, I think this kind of project has some promising educational possibilties.  Getting to know people in your personal learning network through photos and others’ comments is different to knowing them through text comments only. It adds a personal dimension, and the comments don’t have to be cerebral. I imagine the end result will be an interesting testament to my year – memories I may have otherwise forgotten.

I can imagine this as a class project, can’t you? Maybe one which includes teachers, and gives students an insight into teachers outside of the classroom.

9 thoughts on “The 365 photos challenge”

  1. I like the term Personal Learning Network, PLN, something professionals and hopefully students will learn to develop. Your daily pictoral autobiography is most interesting. I wonder if students could do this to the same degree, opening their homes to the world? It takes courage and discretion. Perhaps these personal, pictoral blogs for some need to be restricted to their network?

  2. Tania: I’m quite impressed by your 365 blog. I tried this digital fieldtrip and lasted for about one week. I had two problems: 1) I have two small children and didn’t feel comfortable posting pics of them on Flickr, but they dominate my life!, 2) I don’t have a cell phone, so lugging the camera round and uploading got tedious after 5 days. It’s a great idea, and I love your potential classroom extension.

  3. I was just thinking the same thing. I want to open up this question to my PLN which comprises educators. I know at my school it is forbidden to post photos with a view of any students on the internet. I wonder if I’m making a mistake allowing anyone to look at photos of my family?

  4. Hi Tania,

    I’ve struggled with this one for quite some time and I believe I will continue to err on the side of caution. I was going to participate in 365 photo challenge but I opted out because so many of my photos contain pictures of my kids.

    As a personal rule of thumb, I only post pictures of my kids in areas for friends or family and I have also gone so far as to not mention their names in twitter. Interestingly enough, many friends and colleagues have opted to do the same.

    Do I sound paranoid? I don’t think so, but in today’s world, I prefer to use discretion more as a model. My older kids recognize my habit and understand the importance of being cautious on the web particularly with personal information whether written or as a photo or video.

    Cheers

    Hiram

  5. I thought about joining, but didn’t even make it through the 31 day challenge..lost interest in doing it 🙁 Actually, what I am amazed at is that I actually don’t think I am interested in looking at all those photos from all those people – on the other hand, I like your blog idea, as it allows me to look at yours if I want to which is nice! So the idea of a classroom project does appeal in this sense…specially for the new Year 7 kids at my school. I think I will go ahead and adopt this idea with my English class, or with all of Year 7 – and they can collect the pics in their photo collection in their Ning space. All of our Year 7s will be joining a Ning to begin social networking right at school. Thanks Tania.

  6. Jennifer, I’ve only just started and put up the blog last night, so I don’t know if it will last. I can understand your problems about your children. That’s why I put this question to others in the discussion about ‘Everything you say and do will be recorded by 2030…’ Do you think there’s a difference between your younger children and my older two? I also have to lug a camera but it’s small. More a matter of remembering to take it with me, and I think that will be a good habit to get into. I think I’ll benefit from collecting images, but the privacy thing is a concern.

  7. Thanks for your comments, Judy and Hiram. I’m doing the challenge because I’m giving it a go to see what I can discover about the process. I’m learning incidental things about people from their pictures that I wouldn’t get from text interaction. I’m looking forward to the retrospective journey at the end of the year. I think we miss some things. Hiram, I’ve put the question about privacy and kids’ photos onto the NING discussion, and hope to get some responses. Judy, I’m interested in seeing how your Year 7 NING goes, and we are also thinking of a similar thing with our students, although we haven’t worked out specific details. Today some of us were talking about using wikis and blogs to make our processes transparent for teachers who can’t see the process the precedes the end product. Otherwise the reaction is sometimes ‘Oh, so what, a film or movie trailer – where’s the academic in this? If we show the thinking and interacting, the working through and learning through blogs and photos, I think the value of the process becomes unescapably clear.

  8. By the way, I meant to say I loved the Russian Orthodox pics! And on reflection, if I was going to run a blog for this I would use one that let me upload via my iPhone or my email – so it could be fast and quick to do! I’ve so time poor 🙂

  9. I haven’t embraced the phone technology yet, but discernment is what you need when you’re time poor. Otherwise madness will set in (speaking from experience). Glad you enjoyed the RO stuff, lots more of this – you should see the wood carving.

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