Creative Commons
I think CC will impact the way students learn because it will really help them understand the concept of digital citizenship. In addition, I believe that Flickr has the potential of becoming a great learning tool for students since it uses CC. As a result, students will be able to create projects and appropriately use material they get off the internet (if that material uses CC).
To be honest, I don't use a lot of digital images in my teaching because copyright infringement has always scared me. I allow my students to go to Britannica Image Quest to pull images for projects that they do since it's a safe website; it tells you how to cite the images, and it gives us the rights to every picture. I will admit that that is taking the easy way out, and now that I know that things like CC and Flickr exist, that is going to change the way I teach. First, I plan on modeling this with my students. I will pull Flickr up and search for an image, and then demonstrate how to check if I can use the image or not. That way, the students will begin to understand the importance of not just randomly pulling anything they find off of the internet for their own use.
I do not share content on the web unless repinning a pin on Pinterest or sharing an article via Facebook counts. However, now I am really liking the concept of sharing pictures via Flickr - I think that would be a great place to start. Lots of teaching materials I get come from Pinterest or Teachers Pay Teachers or from one of many Google searches I seem to do on a daily basis.
I think a potential negative that could come with using CC is growing too dependent on it. Everything out there is definitely not using CC, and I would never want my students or myself to only rely on that as a means for determining what to use and what not to use from the internet. There will have to be other lessons done to teach the students how to determine when to use something and when not to even if it does not use CC.
Flickr
Photo Credit: Stanley Zimny Photo Page | Photo Credit: Eric Peacock Photo Page |
Flickr could also be a great tool for ELL students to help increase their vocabulary. I have a student who barely speaks English, and this could be a great way to help her build her vocabulary. She has flashcards that help her practice her English words, and matching the words on these flashcards to pictures on Flickr would be a great activity for her to do.
Richardson (2010) also had a great idea for using Flickr as a class. He suggested having a class Flickr page and posting pictures on it so that friends/family can see what goes on at school. That would be so much fun!!