Apple tree from Flickr

I downloaded this photo of an apple tree from Flickr. It reminds me of a fun poem "Ipple-apple Tree", by Spike Milligan which I have in his children's poems book called "Unspun socks from a chicken's laundry".

I found it easy to create an account to use Flickr, but was slightly disturbed to have to provide a lot of personal details.

There are two levels of privacy settings within the program. The first allows you to share the images you upload just with your family and friends. This would be very useful for networks of people separated by large distances. There are size limits on email attachments so Flickr is more useful than email for this purpose. The second privacy setting is for public sharing of images. If you upload an image you can then choose whether to allow the public to use the image for commercial purposes and/or make alterations to it.

One use of Flickr in learning and teaching is the potential to get feedback about your image since there is a facility to add comments. Art and photography classes could use Flickr to get exposure and feedback on their creative work - either from the general public or from a previously set-up network of peers.

The creative work that other people contribute is likely to be a very useful resource to find images when students need to demonstrate their learning by creating posters, presentations and reports.

When teachers use visual aids it can really assist students who are visual learners - 'a picture is worth a thousand words'. According to Behaviour Intervention Service 2004, students with Asperger's Syndrome may require visual aids to aid comprehension. Flickr is a resource which could greatly assist teachers to provide visual content to their students.