Tag Archives: groups

flickr, Uncategorized, writing

threesixtyfivephotos – daily photo challenge

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This year I decided to take up the challenge of posting at least one photo a day as part of a Flickr group challenge. I ended up creating the blog, threesixtyfivephotos, so that the daily photos and small amount of written description would have somewhere to live. Now that I’ve almost finished, I realise that this exercise has proved to be surprisingly more than I expected.

Here are some of the themes:

My stuff, what I love and why Day 29 Toys     Day 232 Stuff

My garden and its seasonal transformation, how it responds to extremes in temperature in the summer (fellow bloggers in North America have documented how their natural surroundings have responded to extremes in temperature in the winter – interesting for me since we don’t have snow) Day 31 Heat damage in the garden  Day 242 First blossom   Day 225 Winter garden  Day 269  Rain rain  Day 256 The whole blooming lot

Good friends Day 13 Getting together with friends

Odd things around the place Day 20 The burning giraffe

Favourite Routines Day 17 Victoria Market

Traditions   Day 6 Christmas eve  Day 358  Christmas eve   Day 109  Orthodox Easter

Family Dramas     Day 5 Sasha doesn’t get his year 12 results  Day234  19th birthday saga  Day 302 Fencing

My City of Melbourne   Day 178 Federation Square  Day 164 Royal Arcade  Day 339  City sights

Food preparation   Day 212 Guest Photographer makes tarts  Day 348  Christmas baking

School events   Day 210  School Gala

Overseas visitors   Day 206  PLP and bloggers’ dinner at Southbank

Milestones and triumphs     Day 197  16th birthday  Day 187  He has wheels  Day 238  Namesday  Day 264 Day of Triumph  Day 246  Still smiling about yesterday  Day 338  Last day of school

Holidays   Day 185  Heaven  Day 318 Back to Barwon Heads

Special occasions    Day 312  Anna and Pat’s wedding   Babies Day 172 Baby’s first communion  Engagement Day 297

Self-fulfilling prophesies   Day 265 Once upon a time and Day 266 Lalo Symphony Espagnole

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcwdppSunjs&feature=player_embedded]

Special things    Day 288 Russian carving

The photoblog has been a surprisingly rich journey without even trying to be. It’s like a time capsule of sorts. And best of all, it’s connected me in a personal way with people I would otherwise not communicate with.

This could work as an individual student or collaborative class project. Definitely. Just one photo and minimal written description a day.

Why don’t you try it?

21st century learning, art, flickr, learning, networking, photos, Web 2.0

Random facts I learned from Flickr today

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They may be random, but I’m still learning.

Flickr is fun to browse, but more and more, I’m discovering Flickr to be an interesting way to learn. The photos take me into places I’ve never been, to things I normally wouldn’t see, often providing interesting background information.

Here are a few random things I learned from Flickr photos today

This photo was taken in Russia by seriykotik1970

russianbuilding

An art nouveau building near my office that was gutted by fire last week. Sadly it’ll now probably be demolished and ‘rebuilt’. In Moscow fires of this sort are often started deliberately by unscrupulous developers.
Designed by Lev Kekushev in about 1910.
Photographed in 2007

Turkish roosters are very colourful

turkishcock1

turkishcock2

Smarthistory is a group on Flickr which complements the website smarthistory.org. The purpose of this website and Flickr group is to enhance or replace the traditional art history textbook.

For example, you can learn about Matisse’s Red Studio from a short video using Flickr pictures of art collected by group members. 

Redstudiomatisse

If you read About Smarthistory, you will understand the motive behind the creation of this website and Flickr group:  

We are dissatisfied with the large expensive art history textbook. We find that they are difficult for many students, contain too many images, and just are not particularly engaging. In addition, we find the web resources developed by publishers to be woefully uncreative. We had developed quite a bit of content for our online Western art history courses and we had also created many podcasts, and a few screencasts for our Smarthistory blog. So, it finally occurred to us, why not use the personal voice that we use when we teach online, along with the multimedia we had already created for our blog and for our courses, to create a more engaging “web-book” that could be used in conjunction with art history survey courses. We also realized that this content would be useful to museum visitors and other informal learners. We are committed to joining the growing number of teachers who make their content freely available on the web.

Smarthistory is an excellent example of what can be done to create high-quality, free educational resources through collaboration. You’ll understand the scope of this project when you look at the site map which provides a hyperlinked timeline of art history. I also like to check out the discussion in groups.

The best thing about learning on Flickr is that you don’t expect to.  That’s why it’s so enjoyable.

21st century learning, art, creativity, Education, flickr, photos, technology, Web 2.0

Kissing, the pavement and squashing heads on Flickr

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I think I’m in Flickr phase. I’ve had my Blue Period, and now I’m in the middle of my Flickr Period.

Today’s obsession will focus on Groups. There are so many interesting, sometimes strange, and varied groups on Flickr. I’ll give you some examples:

Beautiful Kiss

The pavement

Photo by splintered

Prints of darkness  A place where darkness comes to light, a place for smart photos that aren’t too bright…

Photo by Prudencebrown121
Vanishing beauty  As my father would say, “old things, falling down”

Photo by suspiciousminds
In numerical order  In Numerical Order, photographs are posted to the Group in numerical order.

Photo by vin60
Film noir mood  ;

Photo by Sanchi Saez Agurto

I crush your head “Inspired by Kids in the Hall, these will be pix where you take your fingers and squish the head of someone else.”

Photo by Jeff the Trojan

Social documentary photography A place for professional documentary photographers to discuss emerging technology, marketing and the impossible act of making a living through photography.

Photo by Andrew.David
Visit the world travel guide

Photo by Quejaytee

Gossamer glimpse  “this group is intended to showcase photos of (and through) transparent stuff. delicate fabrics, screens, dirty windows and other such veils will ideally fill our photos’ frames.”

Photo by ratsbeyfus
The secret life of plants 

Photo by Sammie Lynne

Graves, tombs and cemeteries

Photo by njpara31

Flickr fan art   “or any kind of artwork featuring the letters ‘F-L-I-C-K-R'”

Photo by alleluja

Macro photography

Photo by jamesdunbar42

Rural decay  Rural Decay, Pictures of Barns, Silos, Farms and other Rural buildings decaying.

Photo by Mattreynolds

Green is beautiful   

Photo by Peter Hajas

Tell a story in 5 frames

Photo by Robx

Colour and colours 

Photo by edi.peck

Whatever the weather  picures of cloud formations, weather patterns, rough seas, etc.

Photo by johnstravel

Altered signs 

Photo by _kriebel_

Apart from wasting (no! it’s not wasting; but it does eat up time) on these quirky little groups, I do believe that a little ingenuity in conjunction with these groups will lead to some interesting classroom projects.

Some of them leap out –  Tell a story in 5 frames

There’s no need for me to spell out the possibilities for an enjoyable project involving choice, creativity, visual literacy, storytelling skills, etc.

What about Rural decay  or Flickr fan art for art students?

Lots of photography ideas for sure. And don’t disregard the quirky ones, eg.

In numerical order and I crush your head.

There are many more groups and definitely many more ideas to be gleaned from these groups. What are your ideas?

Education, flickr, photos, Web 2.0

crowdsourcing

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCM7w11Ultk&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1]

Found this video on Education Innovation and it prompted reflection. How quickly things have changed in the world of technology in the last few years. Well, ‘last few’ to a person of my generation could mean anything from 5-20. The theme of the video is crowdsourcing. The basic message – we used to have to be physically together to create a crowd, but suddenly, with the internet, we’re able to create a virtual crowd. That is, virtual communities can just form themselves on the basis of shared interests. Fascinating, also, to acknowledge how technology has changed possibilties with photography. Three things have changed what photography can do forever: the development of affordable digital cameras; photo-editing software; and the internet. People are sharing photos, and more and more applications are popping up for creative use of images. Stock photos which used to be expensive are now abundant and therefore cheap because of amateurs’ communities. Think Flickr, think Picasa. Think about photo sharing on Facebook and MySpace. Think about the combination of photos and Google Earth.

Interesting, too, is the blurring of lines between amateur and professional, company and customers. Crowds, or groups, can change a business dramatically, or so the video says. And the most interesting thing, in my opinion, is that online communities organise themselves – what used to take corporate managers to achieve. Could the same be said for schools? How could we free up the system to allow for self-organising groups to form on the basis of shared interest and passion?