Visual literacy: Flickr-fed web 2.0 tools

I am positively convinced of the potential of using images to develop language so I have put together a collection of very interesting web 2.0 tools that feed from Flickr, an online photo sharing platform.

Flickr CC search allows you to find images within Flickr that are under a Creative Commons (CC) license. This is indeed useful when we teach our students about copyright issues.

Tag Galaxy is another creative way of searching images from Flickr. You enter a tag and then narrow your search adding other tags. The search parameters are shown as planets.


When you are satisfied you click on the chosen tag bundle and you get a sphere covered in the images corresponding to those tags. This is how "Audrey + Hepburn + portrait" looks


FlickrPoet generates a visual representation of a poem of phrase. In the example you can see a haiku come to life through related images. Although it is very attractive, there is no possibility of choosing the images.

Phrasr is a tool that allows you to illustrate a sentence of your choice with images taken from Flickr. It is useful for working on word and image associations because you are given options and you have to select an image for each word in the sentence.


This an example of a sentence created by my daughter Jazmin (so bear with the spelling mistakes). It is about her cat Morgan, who, by the way, looks just like the white cat in a hat!!!

A very similar tool is Flillustrator

Bookr allows you to create a book from Creative Commons images taken from Flickr. You choose the images and you can write captions under them. They are great for simple vocabulary books or for more sophisticated digital storytelling. The books can then be embedded somewhere else!

Bubblr is similar to Bookr but instead of creating a book you create a sliding stream of pictures to which you can add captions in the form of speech bubbles.


The final product is also embeddable and looks like this.

You can check Russell Stannard's detailed Bubblr tutorial on his great site Teacher Training Videos.

Earth Album is an interesting mashup between Flickr and Google maps. You can search images according to geographical location by clicking on any place in the map.


Once you have the image strip at the top, when you click on any image you can see a larger size and its information or caption.


Gickr allows you to create animated gifs based from selected images from Flickr. This is the Puente de la Mujer in Puerto Madero, Argentina.

Make your own animation


Flickr-based games are abundant and have already been blogged about so I'd rather send you to the original blog post by GeekTonic.com.


I hope you have discovered some new tools and ways to use Flickr images. If you have any ideas about other tools or how to use these ones, please leave a comment.

Working with images

Blogging is about communicating. And communicating has mainly been done through words, but also through images… because “an image is worth a thousand words”.

Blogging is greatly enhanced by the use of images. And the use of images brings us to the concern about copyright. Although you cannot use any image you come across, there are sources of images which you can use, share and modify for different purposes. These enabling licenses are grouped under the term Creative Commons.

Here’s a short video explaining the basics of how Creative Commons works.

The second step is where to get these images from. You can use the Creative Commons Search engine to find them at http://search.creativecommons.org/ which performs a search in several image hosting sites and aggregators such as Flickr and Google Images. And you will probably find something interesting ready to be used.

Another interesting image search tool that works with Flickr images is called Tag Galaxy. It allows you to refine your search until you are satisfied and it then shows the results as a dynamic 3D sphere of images which you can turn to see them all. In this case, you will need to check the copyright license of each of the images you are interested in.

But finding the right image may not be enough. If the license allows it you can modify it. But how?

There are two options:

1- Modifying the image by using a photo editor to add certain effects to the image.

2- Selecting only a part of the image you have. An interesting tool to do screen captures of whole computer screens or parts of it is called Jing .

This is only a very brief introduction to the topic of working with images and there are many tools available to work with them. Remember that images bring a text alive!

Phrasr

Phrasr is a tool that allows you to illustrate a sentence of your choice with images taken from Flickr. It is useful for working on word and image associations because you have to select an image for each word in the sentence.


This an example of a sentence created by my daughter Jazmin. It is about her cat Morgan, who, by the way, looks just like the white cat in a hat!!!

Photofunia

I have just come across this fun photo edition web application.

In Photofunia you can choose from a lot of different fun effects for your photos!

Check these:

Animoto and One True Media

This week we were asked to explore Animoto and I could not resist playing around with it yesterday. Here are my comments:

- It looked amazing at first sight.
- You can make as many 30-second shorts for free, but they would only fit 3 or 4 pictures. Too short!
- Full-length videos are $3 each. Haven't tried...

Then I remembered I had seen another tool to do something like that and...I found it!

One True Media is a bit more complex but lets you make a video from your uploaded photos, chose styles, transitions, music and voila! There are premium (paid) features but the free ones work really well! Here's my first experiment with a few photos of my daughter and our three lovely cats.

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Bubbleshare and Slideshare

This week I'll be exploring and comparing Bubbleshare and Slideshare.

Bubbleshare is very straightforward to use and ideal for photo sharing. I have used it before to build a fable storybook for a fables project we did a couple of years ago. Grade 2 students had read "The Lion and the Mouse" so we did a kind of simple acting out of the fable by creating still frames of the most important parts and took pictures of them. I then uploaded the photos and captioned them with a very simple retelling of the fable.

BubbleShare: Share photos - Find great Clip Art Images.


I also think a nice use is for showcasing students’ productions. I have used powerpoint for that before but Bubbleshare is another option if you want to blog it.

Slideshare, on the hand, I have never used. It looks more suitable for more active presentations including video and audio. I am sure, on more detailed exploration, I will find interesting ways to exploit its potential.

PicLits

I have also tried this tool. It's called PicLits and it allows you to create word compositions/art on top of a chosen photo. BTW, thanks to Nik Peachey for suggesting it.

I am thinking about vocabulary practice but it can also work for syntaxis.

Have a look at my first attempt. I could not help using the gymnast...


See the full PicLit at PicLits.com

Bookr

I have been playing around with Bookr. It allows you to make books using pictures from Flickr.

This is my first attempt at a very simple book intended to practice basic vocabulary.



Very simple but indicative of the potential use of this tool.