My categories on edublogger have just got outta control!  In the early times of my blogging attempts I really had no idea about the difference between categories and tags – I used to think they were actually the same things (and if you use blogger – there’s no categories, only labels – which I am guessing are the same as tags).

Hence this blog’s categories have spiraled out of control and are in need of a tidy up.  I’ve checked with edublogs guru extraordinaire Sue Waters to make sure that cleaning up my categories won’t make all my posts coming through anyone’s RSS reader again – I hate for you all to be subjected to all my early writing again!!  If by chance that does happen – my sincere apologies to you in advance!

So when I’m done, hopefully it will be easier for anyone to find “stuff” (aka: I’ll be able to find stuff more easily).

I’ve decided to categorise all blog posts with either Tools, Resources, Conferences, Collaboration, Classroom or Blogging (for now).

What categories do you use?

Image Attribution: file cabinet to heaven by t.magnum

This morning on twitter started by @Riptide_Furse …………………

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………….. and ended in a skype call between Fred and myself where he shared what Flickr tools he presented to his teachers at the workshop and their various ways of being used.

Here are just some of the things Fred so generously shared with me ………

1. fd’s Flickr Toys

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This site is full of great tools to use with flickr photos. You don’t need to sign up (athough you can if you’d like) and within a few minutes you can create the most professional looking motivational poster. Here’s my 2 minute effort:

Suggestions for use in the classroom:

• Have students take a photo that represents school motto
• Use Jigsaw / Mosaic Maker with photos from around the school/community representing maths concepts (ie Shapes, angles etc)
• Use Warholizer for Start of Year Activity with student photos
• Spice up class blog with Cartooniser, Framer, Billboard, Slideshow, Writer (list is almost endless possibilities with these gadgets!)

2. Befuddlr

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Use in the classroom?
We talked this over for a bit and decided that you could have some major conversations about which photos would be easy or hard to un-bedfuddlr.

• What would make a picture harder to organise back to its original state?
• Fun problem solving activity to do for fast finishers
• An activity on a rainy day
• A taskboard activity
  

3. Dumpr.net

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You don’t need to sign up (but you can if you’d like) and within 2 minutes I managed to create this …………
A museum-photo of our Class Mascot Kawekakea meeting Ewan McIntosh at ULearn07 earlier this year.

_{Created with dumpr.net – fun with your photos}

Most of the tools in Dumpr.net are similar to fd’s flickr toys but there are a couple of different ones. Don’t mix up the url with Dumpr.com like I did –

Use in the classroom?

• Use Photo in Art Museum, Jigsaw, Make photos look old, Stone Mosaic, for Presentations, blog posts etc
• Use Photo to Sketch, Alien Vision for creating online avatars, profile photos etc
• Use Photo inside a photo for problem solving puzzles

4. Other Possibilities for the Classroom

• If you’re looking for ways to work REAL LIFE editing into writing
  What’s wrong with these pictures Apostrophes Quote abuse
• Spell with Flickr
• Animated GIFs with Flickr

Got heaps of time on your hands? You could check out this long, long, long list of The Great Flickr Tools Collection!

And if that wasn’t enough, those great folks from Commoncraft have released this:

Online Photo Sharing in Plain English

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So, what are your favourite things to do with flickr?