Thing # 11: Photosharing with Flickr

WOW! I had no idea that I would be spending so much time picking out a picture to go along with my blog. I began looking at pictures at 9:00 and finally decided on a picture at 11:40. Time flies when you're looking at pictures that you didn't take. I am very sad to have to admit that this was the very first picture that I saw when I started to explore flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/. I wonder how many other people in my class spent hours exploring pictures before selecting the first picture that they saw. Please leave a comment on my blog if you did this. I think that they haven't come up with a twelve step program for people like us.

I remember the very first assignment that I worked on when I went attended Stephen F. Austin in my dorm room. I was majoring in Elementary Education at the time and we had to illustrate all the letters in the alphabet with pictures. Now would be a good time to mention that computers had not even been invented yet (boy am I showing my age) and all we could use were at the time were pictures from magazines. Thinking back to that assignment, we also had to use rubber cement to glue the pictures on to pieces of 8X11 1/2 card stock and laminate them as well. If we had to do the assignment now, we could use Flickr, cut and paste the pictures to a word document, print them out and laminate. I am sure that the assignment would be completed in record time using today's technology. I couldn't begin to tell you the hours, days, and nights that I spent on that first assignment.

The reason why I chose this particular picture for my blog has a lot to do with the title. Even though life takes us on a daily journey to "who knows where" and "anything can happen", at some point in time "there is no place like home" as simple effulgence wants us to remember. We all have times where we would just love to click our heels together three times and repeat the phrase "there is no place like home" just as Dorothy did in the Wizard of Oz and be able to magically get there. If it was only that easy to get back home or out of a sticky situation.

Getting back to the reality of this entry makes me realize how much we use images as teachers. There is a lot of truth to the phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words!" Not everyone sees the same things in a picture. Having students brainstorm and write about what they see in a picture, or how it makes them feel, or why they chose a particular to write about is pure genius and allows them to express themselves.