Once a person joins this website, you are able to create a profile and put different personal information on it such as favorite music, books, hobbies, anything at all. All students in the class with or without disabilities are able to make their own profile, and they are able to look at the other student's profiles as well and search them for different key words on their peer's profiles. People are also able to upload pictures on this site and tag people and things in the pictures.
For language learners, this website can be very useful. For example, if a teacher was trying to have their students learn what different animals are, they could ask the students to post different pictures of different animals and ask them to tag them with the appropriate name. This can also be useful for students with special needs, because Flickr can help a child work on their writing skills. A student can have fun posting different pictures, and by tagging them/filling out his/her profile, they are able to work on their reading and writing skills. Flickr can also help children with special needs make friends with their peers. They can look at each other's profiles and learn what common interests they may have and comment on each other's profiles. This can help with social skills for not only children with special needs, but also children in general education who may be shy or need help with making friends. Flickr is very helpful and teachers are able to encourage students to "use the English language in fun and personally meaningful ways" by having them explore it.
According to the article "Photo Sharing in Education" students can use photo sharing to "make storybooks, embed your photos into your school or class website, inspire writing and creativity, create digital portfolios where students and instructors can comment on the photos that are included." I think That the possibilities for using Flickr in the special education classroom are endless. There are even different applications students can use to make different projects.
I chose to use the website http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/ . I looked around the site and saw that you could make a movie poster. I remembered that in elementary school teachers had me make movie posters for books we read and we would have to think of actors to play each character. I loved that project, and I think that my students would have even more fun making a poster online. This application was very easy to use, and I think that if I was to split the students into groups and had them work together, it would be a good way to help the students work on their social skills, and the students without disabilities can help those with disabilities. In the movie poster I posted at the top of the blog, I chose the book Flat Stanley, and I put the name of the characters, author, illustrator, a mpaa rating, and a release date on it.
I think that students would love using Flickr for class projects because it is different than most projects they work on. I never did projects on the computer in elementary school, and I think that this is a very fun way for students to learn and even work together.
Nice job summarizing some of the uses and also thinking about students with disabilities in your response. Very creative ideas!
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