23 Things Part 8

Part 8 continues us on our Flickr journey. This time we get to explore a variety of tools that work with Flickr. These tools can be fun, are easy to use and give us some different ways to think about learning. Here's a few tools that we considered:

• Spell with Flickr- this is a really cool tool. I can easily see this being used (and overused) by teachers and students. Essentially, it works by you typing in a word and then clicking "spell". The site returns each letter in your word in the form of a picture. The picture may be from a photograph of the letter, or some digital representation. You can click on individual letters to get another choice. Really cool.
• Flickr Color Pickr - you click on a color and it finds pictures that match that color. This one didn't do too much for me personally. Art teachers may really like it though.
• Retrievr - The idea here is that you upload a picture from your computer (or a link to a picture on the web) and it finds similar pictures. My mileage definitely varied on this one. I tried a couple of pictures (one of the clock and one of a school). The clock didn't return anything that I would've expected. The school did return some buildings, but it also returned some pictures of people. I couldn't figure out the exact logic behind some of the choices. I would consider this a fun tool. It was quick. However, if you're a linear thinking person, and expecting similar pictures to one that you have, don't have high expectations. If you're an abstract thinker looking for serendipity, this one's for you.
• Picture Sudoku - This is a fascinating idea. I could see lots of uses for this, except, you can't directly upload pictures to the puzzle. Since you can search by tags, or users, you could control the pictures that way. However, you'll need to plan ahead. Pictures that I uploaded weren't included. The may be related to a delay for my account showing up through Flickr (Flickr explains that there may be a 24-48 hour delay). Anyway, this could be a way for students to practice distinguishing between similar things. The could be useful in science or for ELL students.
• Flickr montager - This is a tool that uses a bunch of smaller pictures to recreate a larger picture. I guess I didn't see an educational use so quickly, but it is pretty cool.
• Flickr Memry - A simple to use and create "concentration" game. You can pick the number of "cards" that are in play (either 3x3 or 6x6). You click on each card to turn it over to reveal the image. Once you select the image and it's pair, those cards stay turned over. The cards are chosen by tags, so again, in order to control the pictures, you'll need original tags.
• Jigsaw - Turn your picture into a virtual jigsaw (you can also order one if you really like it and want one for real). Interesting images are created that could add to the visual appeal of things.
  

All in all, I've enjoyed learning about Flickr. Some of these tools can really add visual pop to your documents, web sites, etc. Some can help students learn stuff in different ways. All of them will certainly increase the interest for students.