This past November my father bought a Nintendo Wii. The first people to try it out was neither his daughters nor his numerous nephews and nieces. It was actually his staff who broke it in, and he invited them to go bowling, play tennis and golf all on the Wii as a team-building exercise. My dad also bought the Wii because it can play your digital photos on a instant slide show that you can customize with music.
The Wii (aptly named) is the most group-oriented gaming consoles I have experienced. It's no wonder that public libraries hold Wii parties and tournaments, the Wii allows many and all sorts of people with varying degrees of video gaming skills to participate. It was inspiring to hear about my dad applying the Wii to his workplace! It reminded me how technology can bring people together in such a new and fun ways.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Friday, January 4, 2008
Week 3, Thing #6: Flickr Mashups
My head is still reeling from exploring Flickr's mashups, web apps, and tools! Although it was exciting to see the creative ways how Flickr images are used, it was also a bit overwhelming. Browsing through a few of the games was cute and distracting, but I wanted to discover a Flickr tool that had classroom applications.
The Flickr mashups that I thought would be useful were Trippermap or Flickrmap and Travelr, which seem to do the same thing. They both take your pictures from Flickr and map them. I like the idea of viewing photos of a place while simultaneously orienting them on a world map. Studying a map with photo albums of the cities and its people gives students the opportunity to discover more meaning from political and topographical maps. These tools give you the freedom to create your own maps from your own pictures. This means, however, that your maps are restricted to the pictures that you own. I was wondering if there was a Flickr tool where images around the world are shared. I have a hunch that Mappr does this, but only for the U.S. I can only hunch because when I went on their website it only describes what Mappr does, and there is no demonstration. Did I just miss the link for it?
In terms of classroom applications for Flickr, I saw the suggestions for trading cards and magazine covers. I imagine that the trading card idea would work great for history classes as a way to study biographies and English classes when studying the characters from novels.
In my earlier post I was playing around with Flickr by finding pictures that related to words I typed in the search engine. One classroom application this may have is for vocabulary assignments or even studying SAT vocab. Students could use their vocabulary list and find pictures that define the word, and write a corresponding sentence that utilizes the word and relates to the picture. Visual learners would benefit from this visual vocabulary list, especially one that they created for themselves.
The Flickr mashups that I thought would be useful were Trippermap or Flickrmap and Travelr, which seem to do the same thing. They both take your pictures from Flickr and map them. I like the idea of viewing photos of a place while simultaneously orienting them on a world map. Studying a map with photo albums of the cities and its people gives students the opportunity to discover more meaning from political and topographical maps. These tools give you the freedom to create your own maps from your own pictures. This means, however, that your maps are restricted to the pictures that you own. I was wondering if there was a Flickr tool where images around the world are shared. I have a hunch that Mappr does this, but only for the U.S. I can only hunch because when I went on their website it only describes what Mappr does, and there is no demonstration. Did I just miss the link for it?
In terms of classroom applications for Flickr, I saw the suggestions for trading cards and magazine covers. I imagine that the trading card idea would work great for history classes as a way to study biographies and English classes when studying the characters from novels.
In my earlier post I was playing around with Flickr by finding pictures that related to words I typed in the search engine. One classroom application this may have is for vocabulary assignments or even studying SAT vocab. Students could use their vocabulary list and find pictures that define the word, and write a corresponding sentence that utilizes the word and relates to the picture. Visual learners would benefit from this visual vocabulary list, especially one that they created for themselves.
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