Evaluation:
Background: Flickr is an application launched by Yahoo, to upload and organize photos and videos. It is generally aimed at photo availability for everyone, at the same time, offers copyright privileges. It is made of three main tools; Flickr uploader, to upload photos, the Flickr badge to organize your profile and Flickr mail, to mail friends in your contact.
Ease of Use: Flickr is very easy to use. It is an application of yahoo. Hence if you have a yahoo mail account, you can easily access it when you are online, so you don’t have to log in twice. It also doesn’t require a new member to put in lot of details before the account is processed. However, you need to have a yahoo id. It also allows you to print directly from the website.
Cost: it is free! You don’t need to pay any form of charges, but the latest or updated versions like Flickr pro is charged as per the offer, but it has its additional features.
Advantages; Flickr, unlike other social sites such as Face book. Twitter, multiply, etc, is very specific. The main aim is to supply a wide range of photos for the general use of the public. The latest is videos though. So it is very specific, and most relevant pictures can be found. It also has no restrictions hat so ever on the type of photo, how much you upload or where you upload from. As a biology teacher, I find it very interesting, as we need more diagrams and real life examples to demonstrate concepts. This is one of the best ways. This saves a lot of time, as there is no chat option, hence we can do our work quietly. Flickr also links to Flickr blog. Flickr blog has excellent blogs, again with lot of relevant photos.
(Flickr home page, summarizes your activity, good organization)
You can also link your friends from email accounts, be it by Google or Yahoo, and see their recent activities. As far you send a friend request, you don’t have to await your friend’s respond, but start using or viewing their photos instantly. This is something new and interesting.
Another advantage is that you can link/tag your friends and share to other social networks, like Face book, Twitter or eblogger. Photo sharing using Flickr is very easy.
One very interesting feature of this application is that, if your friend is listing some activity, you don’t get lot of mails, alarming you of their new activity. This prevents lot of junk mails, compared to Facebook, which keeps mailing new activities.
Another yet interesting thing is that you can choose your favorite groups for example, UNESCO, and as soon as they upload new photos, you can access it via your account.
As students from Pacific Islands have limited understanding on larger nations, Flickr has a world map section. If you click on this and a particular country, all search results like videos and relevant photos on geography, biology, animals, shopping, etc, will be listed in seconds. Flickr is thus, very fast.
Privacy: You can also choose which photos you want to be viewed by the public, who all can view, and you can also license your photo. This ability to license, gives you good copyright privilege of your data, and you can also choose how you want to license it.
Disadvantages: Since it is a yahoo application, anyone under 18 can falsely certify their age, and access unwanted photos. Safe search if turned off will include in your search, pornographic photos, and this is harmful for educational purpose, unless proper monitoring or a mature individual is using.
Conclusion: Flickr is a very useful tool. Its application in teaching and learning is large. Not only as science teachers to use photos in classroom examples but for students as a whole to discover the world. Students can actually view live photos, very applicable, and in large resolutions, without going to Zoos or parks. It also links to a wide source of networks, and sites, so you don’t have to search up every time, and waste time finding photos.
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