Flickr (Thing 10)

pretty cow
Originally uploaded by MNicoleM

I really don't know how to reflect on my flickr experience lol - I've been addicted to flickr for over 3 years ...

I do use flickr frequently in class. My students have lots of basic communication goals - identifying pictures of common objects, animals, foods, actions, classmates, etc. Here are some activities that we do in my class using flickr:

• we look at pictures of things we have done as a class and talk about it (working on communication, retelling past events, etc.)
• we look at multiple pictures representing our vocabulary words for that week (ex: if we are doing an animal unit, we may have 10 different animals for the week - so we will watch a slideshow with 100 pictures (1o different pictures of each of the 10 animals) and the students have to tell me which animal is pictured)
  
• I may show a slideshow of pictures representing different actions and students have to produce a sentence (ex: he is jumping) about the picture
• I use Multicolr Search Lab to find pictures in different colors and have students identify the colors
• I search for pictures of letters or numbers and have students identify them

Basically, I use flickr in place of flashcards. The images are much larger, photos are more realistic than most flashcard pictures, and there are practically endless examples of each thing I need a picture of! Because students with autism frequently have trouble generalizing, showing them multiple examples of the same thing is important. Using flickr to create slideshows saves me from having to purchase or make 10 different sets of flashcards just to get 10 different examples of a cow. Plus I can take my own photos (of classmates, objects in the classroom, places in the school, teachers, etc.) and incorporate those as well!

I also use flickr frequently to share what we're doing in class with parents. I give my students' parents my flickr web address so that they can look at the pictures that I take throughout the year. Then at the end of the year, I use Qoop (a flickr partner) to create photo books for each student. Here is a slideshow of the photos in this past year's photobook. (btw, I do have the parents' permission to post the photos on my blog)