Thing 11: To Be or Not to Be Flikr'd

Durante el ensayo de "Hamlet, por poner un ejemplo" de la compañía Factoría Teatro de Madrid.
by Julio César (FunKa-Lerele), Flikr

Studying Hamlet right now in British Literature represents a real challenge to my seniors, so I look for as many things to make it real to them as possible. This photo of Hamlet in a wheelchair could provide a lot of interesting dialogue starters.

Both a strength and a weakness of Flikr is the way that each photograph links you to the photographer's entire portfolio. Chances are if you like the photo that you chose to open or use, you will like any number of others he or she has to offer, and you can spend hours perusing just that one site, which equals a huge time consumption--an always present danger while web browsing as it is.

That aside, Flikr offers great possibilities for all kinds of PowerPoint and other presentations for the classroom because virtually any search of any topic I did yielded pertinent photographs. I think people in this world have traveled (and taken photographs) everywhere!!

Thing 10: Uncommonly Creative with Creative Commons

Wow!  So that's how MIT was able to put all those courses up on the web.  I have taken advantage of some of their materials during the past year (always giving proper credit, of course), and have thought that it was just such a swell thing for them to do, but never understanding how they could put all that material out there and not worry about a zillion people running off with their copyrighted research, etc.  So CC was the way.

I'm sorry I haven't noticed the CC logo until now.  I know I'm not the most observant person in the world, but I hate letting technology stuff slip by me.  Especially when it comes to copyright issues.  And I have to admit that I thought putting a URL with a photo in your online material was enough credit as long as its author had not expressly forbidden it to be used.  Yeesh; I hate 20/20 hindsight, but it's better than no sight.

Learning about CC will come in so handy for my classes because my students are constantly asking how to cite this or that.  They really are worried about plagiarism, especially with the Honor Code we have at our school; no one wants to be called up on Honor Code violations, even if it's unintentional.  So they watch their Ps and Qs, and this will help tremendously.