Sunday, April 11, 2010

Web 2.0: Sharing your Pictures

You may have heard about Web 2.0 and wondered what is it all about. A quick search on Youtube will yield a number of videos showing people of all ages using blogs, wikis, and social networking sites. So, what is it all about?

Web 2.0 is a change in philosophy of the Internet. Gone are the days of the dotcom bubble when people used their ingenuity to make money. Web 2.0 has changed the internet to be more open, collaborative and social. For me, it is all about instant access to information, creation, and sharing.


There are many ways to share your pictures on the internet. We've all used email for this purpose and it works just fine if you want to limit your pictures to your contacts. Many people also use Facebook for this as well. But in the spirit of Web 2.0, people are now sharing their pictures with the rest of the world. One of the main picture sharing sites is Flickr.

After you upload your pictures to Flickr, you are able to edit them, add effects, organize them and share them with whomever you choose to. Add tags (key words) to your photos so that people can search for them (click here to give it a try). Find your family and friends on Flickr to see their photos and share yours with them. You can also specify on a globe where you took your picture or search by location.

So why use a public site like Flickr? First, it is a very effective method to have access to your pictures from anywhere since they are on the Internet. Flickr is also a very effective image search tool when doing research. Pictures are supplied by others so it makes sense to be a part of that community and add to the collection.

Check out my Flickr collection (which I'll be adding more to in the future):

Below is a quick video showing you how to reduce the file size of your digital pictures. This will make it easier and faster to upload your pictures.


2 comments:

  1. Regarding Flickr - How careful do we need to be with school pictures on Flickr? Pictures with students?

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  2. Good question, Marian. I believe that our district FOIP agreements cover us for putting pictures of students on our school websites, as long as we don't include personal information. As for non-school websites, I don't believe we currently have a policy, so you may want to hold off on posting student pictures on non-school websites.
    I would certainly recommend taking a close look at the FOIP agreement as well as ensuring all of you kids have one of those agreements signed at the school before placing any pictures publicly.

    Here is the Grasslands Policy regarding information being posted on school Web sites:
    http://www.grasslands.ab.ca/docs/library/3.9.1._-_Web_Sites_Policy.pdf

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