Flickr in the Art Room

This post may be old news to many of you, but its been an awesome revelation to me!  

I have an Apple TV in my classroom and one day I noticed that one of the apps on the screen was for Flickr.  I had been on the site before, but never used it myself.  A light went on and I realized that I could use that app to show students examples of projects as I introduce them and store the photos that are on my computer.

I have recently been showing students photos of good works as examples on various projects in my room, instead of keeping a paper copy.  The paper examples are nice, but:

A) They get beat up easily.  

B) I don’t like to show kids MY work because they get frustrated if theirs doesn’t look like that.

C) If they are younger students, they only want to do it like mine and don’t use their creativity or self expression.

PLUS: the projects that turn out really well, students want to take home and keep (and rightly so!)  Enter the photograph examples!

Now I take pictures of student work, upload them to Flickr in the appropriate album (divided by groups of classes - once they get too large, I may subdivide them) and show those examples on my Apple TV using the Flickr app. (I can also pull it up on my computer if just one students needs to see it because they were gone, etc.)  I like that students get to see several examples, but its rather fleeting so they aren’t just copying what’s in front of them.  They can be inspired and then do their own thing with it.

I’ve even started uploading my work to the site, just because its fun to show kids my work, and its a great way to archive work I’ve done for other people.  

A simple idea?  YES!  Those are the best kind. I'm excited to discover other interesting ways I can use this lovely site!

Happy picture taking!