Photo sharing websites have been around since the 90s, but it took a small startup site called Flickr to catapult the idea of “sharing” into a full blown online community. Flickr has become the fastest growing photo sharing site on the web and is known as one of the first websites to use keyword “tags” to create associations and connections between photos and users of the site. For this discovery exercise, you are asked to take a good look at Flickr and discover what this site has to offer. Find out how tags work, what groups are, and all the neat things that people and other libraries are using Flickr for.Discovery Resources:
a. Take a good look around Flickr and discover an interesting image that you want to blog about. Be sure to include either a link to the image or, if you create a Flickr account, you can use Flickr’s blogging tool to add the image in your post. Another option you have for including images in your post is to use by using the Wordpress photo upload tool built into your blogs.
– OR –
b. If you’re up to an easy challenge … create a Free account in Flickr and use a digital camera (or a camera phone) to capture a few pictures of something in your classroom or in your life. Upload these to your Flickr account and tag at least one of the images “CCMS#3“ and mark it public. Then create a post in your blog about your photo and experience. Be sure to include the image in your post. Once you have a Flickr account, you have two options for doing this: through Flickr’s blogging tool or by using the Wordpress photo upload tool built into your blogs.
So go ahead, explore the site and have some Flickr photo fun.
PS: A quick word about photo posting etiquette - When posting identifiable photos of other people (especially minors) is it advisable to get the person’s permission before posting their photo in a publicly accessible place like Flickr. Never upload pictures that weren’t taken by you (unless you have the photographer’s consent) and always give credit when you include photos taken by someone else in your blog.
3. Learn about RSS feeds and setup your own Google reader account.
4. Locate a few useful education related blogs and/or news feeds.
This week’s activity is all about learning what an RSS news feed is and how to set up a Google Reader account which is free, and will allow you to stay of top of all those blogs you want to read.
Before we start, watch this video:
Have you even heard of RSS? Once you discover all that it’ll do for you, you’ll be glad for the time you spend on this activity. RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and it is a special file format that collects news and information as it is updated and sends it automatically to computer users on a regular schedule. How many websites, blogs, news sites, etc. do you visit everyday? How much time do you spend searching for the sites, the specific articles, following link after link to get to the source? Well… RSS or news feeders will collect all those sources and put them together on one page for you - no need to find the bookmark, search the web. Once you find a site or news page you want to read frequently, you can subscribe to its RSS feed and it will now appear right in your own feed site. It sounds confusing and there is still a lot that I’m not sure about but to set up a Google newsfeed is pretty simple and you’ll love it once you get started.This week’s activity:1. Take a look at Simple Mom’s blog post, Subscribing to Blogs 101 - this a simple and straight forward explanation of RSS feeds.2. Set up an account with Google Reader. There are many others you can choose from but my favorite and the one I’m most familiar with is Google Reader. Go to the Google Reader Getting Started page and you’ll speed right through this.
3. Subscribe to this blog.
4. Subscribe to several of the blogs that I’ve listed in my Blog Roll on our CCMS Book Bag Blog.
5. Subscribe to a few blogs of a personal interest to you. You can find lots of great blogs by searching for “blog lists.” Try Technorati Popular: Top 100 blogs, ODb Top 100 Education Blogs, or just take a look at Edublog’s Bloggers and Awards.
7. Add a blog post about your experience. Do you like the idea of RSS feeds? How can you utilize the feed for school or classroom use?
Hopefully, you’ve had a chance to read all the posts related to this activity and understand your Itinerary. To begin with, you’ll need to set up your very own personal blog so you can begin to journal your experiences, discoveries, and ideas. For this program, I recommend that you use Edublogs, a popular free online blog hosting service that is extremely easy to use and designed especially for education.
Creating a blog using Edublogs, takes three steps:
Create an account
Name your blog
Select your template
Once you’ve created your blog here are two important things to know:
To add posts: The maintenance interface that you will use to add posts, edit or change the step-up your blog is accessed online at Be sure to write down your login and password.
To view your blog: Your blog address is http://(xxxx).edublogs.com, (xxxx)=the unique identifier you entered in Step 2. Write down your blog address.
If you run into problems or would like more information about blogs and using Edublogs here are some tutorials and video clips you can use. Muse 1 Activity:
Add a test post or two.
Note: Use one of your test posts to create an entry about one of the blogs that you read in the first part of this post.
Consider writing a brief bio, sharing only what you want to - remember, our blogs are out for the world to see! Or share what you’d like to get out of this program.
Enter your blog address on this blog’s page CCMS Blogs.
Spend some time playing with your new blog: explore the options/features, try adding an image, or whatever strikes you.
Have fun!!!!
IMPORTANT NOTE: How you choose to identify yourself on your blog is your choice. You can blog under a screen name, anonymously, or as yourself.
This venture is an online learning experience that is designed to encourage participants to learn more about Web 2.0 applications in the classroom. These are technologies that are free and available on the Internet - they are changing the way society is accessing information and communicating with each other.
Over the course of the next eight and a half weeks, this blog will focus on “Nine Muses” and activities to help help you become more familiar with blogging, RSS news feeds, wikis, podcasting, online applications, and image hosting sites.
If you have any questions, feel free to email me or stop by the media center. It’s time to get started, enjoy and remember to view this as an adventure, an Odyssey,if you will!
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