Well, as you can see from the sample above, I’ve collected photos to use with my “A River Sutra” unit. The book takes place in India and several of the chapters refer to naked ascetic monks. This is one of the few pictures I found where you can’t see any wieners. I still think it will give the kids a vivid sense of what these ash covered men look like. It certainly was useful to have a purpose in mind when searching Flickr and helped me begin to understand what I might use Flickr for. Of course, I assume this is a fairly primitive usage – collecting photos to show students. Nevertheless, it’s a start and at the very least I could have students do a similar thing, adding captions perhaps, or presenting their collection to the class or in small groups. I could also see students approaching Flickr with more abstract purposes in mind, finding photos that connect more thematically than literally. (I clicked on the Flickr poetry page and that was cool. I assume the assignment was to find a photo and write a poem inspired by it. Could do that with a short story as well.) From a technical standpoint, I goofed…I pasted links in my Wiki page and backed out of it before saving. Had to do some recreating. Yuck. Learned a lesson, for sure.
