Research Activities Module 3 - photoblogs

Jane Goodall's Camp - This photoblog example shows one way that even very young students can use these tools. This young student (Sophie, grade 3) photographed the biome, of Jane Goodall's camp, that she created. She added things that Jane Goodall would use on a daily basis as she is observing the chimpanzees. Some item in the biome are: maps, fruit, pots, tea and a lantern. She then tagged and titled each item in the biome so that when the cursor is placed over the item, there is a lable that appears on the photo. This just shows that even young students can get introduced to web 2.0 in ways that are not very intimidating. You need a photo and an Flickr account. You can make this project public, like Sophie's or private, if need be.


The Secret Life of Plants - This photblog has some amazingly beautiful photos. There are over 50,000 plant photos in the collective photo album. There are 6,476 album members. The discussions range from "the secret life of plants documentary" to "help me identify". With this particular blog, students could either learn about the identity of the plants (maybe a plant taxonomy class), group together all blue flowers...all read flowers( a younger class) or they could create one of their own with a similar idea. They could collect photos on all the animals they see in a week or all of the leaves they see falling in the fall. There are so many ways that a class could use this type of photoblog and they could either do this by taking the photos themselves or by tagging other's photos into an a album of their own.


loc.alize.us - This site is a wonderful locating where you can geotag your "world". This phot was tagged with other photos that were taken at the exact location that the actual phot was taken. To explain this easier, the photographer took a phot and tagged it with latitude and longitude coordinates ( can also use lacation name or latitude). Then these coordinates are added to a larger photo, possibly using a digital globle photo. Then, another individual can go to the larger photo and click on the coordinates and see the picture taken from that exact location. People can search for photos even using just latitude and longitude coordinates. This can be used by students of all ages. Some older students could actual create a geotagged photo and younger students could learn from geotagged photos. They could "visit" the great barrier reef or the deserts of Australia without ever getting onto a plane. They could create one for the local zoo by tagging all of the exhibits and add a photo to those coordinates on a map. They could geotag all of the trees on the school property. I see so many options for this type of project...my mind is racing as I write!!

The Red Rule - Well, that title says it all. All of these photos in this photoblog had to have some red item in them. The items range from red lips on a billboard to a red ladybug on a leaf. There are over 234,000 photos in this album and there are 26, 319 members that have joined this community. There is, again, a discussion section to this community. These discussions range from "let's make a story" to "where are you from?". I see students doing the same in their classrooms. They could easily take pictures of items that are of a certain color shape, texture, size(large/small), etc. For younger students, teachers could gather photos in a similar manner. These photos could be of things that are very familiar to the students....fruits, veggies, toys, cars....whatever. Then the younger students could learn colors by searching through the photoblog. Oh, I guess I just recommended using these tools in a preschool setting.