Photo Sharing

"I read on other teacher blogs that Flickr is really good for the classroom, and I think, 'No way,'" says Jamie Tubbs, a fifth-grade teacher in Cincinnati. "It's open to anybody, and, because of that, you've got to assume people will put stuff there that will be offensive." Yes Tubbs is correct there might be offensive photos but what photo sharing site doesn’t have that risk. What are we suppose to do block all photo sharing web sites. You can find offensive photos by Googling are we going to block Google now too? Rather than blocking these sites of the future we should focus on teaching our students how to use them properly and teaching them internet safety so they know what to do and how to protect their information. “Tubbs, like many teachers, uses Flickr avidly, but he shies away from bringing it into the classroom. Rather than let students search for photos, he finds them on his own time and brings them into class as writing prompts or for blog entries.” I think Tubbs should try to be a little more open to new ideas and open to the future. You could have the students look up photos for writing assignments, PowerPoint projects, like the article stated you can look up and photo and have the students write a blog or a writing prompt for the photo. When I was in high school I was photo editor for the yearbook and my new staffers I had them find 3 different kinds of photos and write captions for them. Then I went over the captions when they finished the assignment and helped them. I taught some how to write a caption and I corrected others and it not only helped me as a teacher see where my students were but also helped them see some improvement. Then at the end of the year I showed them their captions in the yearbook and they all felt so proud of them self’s. You can also search photos to put up in your classroom. I searched apples and found so many cool apple photos I could hang up in my classroom with my student’s names on it. You can look up planets, plants, tools, cars, ABC’s and 123,’s. It’s amazing how easy it is to find any photo on the internet. You just need to be open minded and get creative.