I have found a wonderful application for the use of Flickr within my classroom. At the beginning of each semester, I spend several units talking about making introductions in the target language. I would set up an account/group in Flickr and invite my students to join the group. I would then instruct them as to how to upload a picture either of themselves or of their family member(s). From there I would ask them to write a little bit about their picture that they posted for the group. Depending on the level of language learners that I am teaching for that semester, this activity could be tweeked so that they more advanced language learner would be able to report their paragraph in the target language. This would then allow the students to introduce themselves in a non-threatening platform and one that would be fun for them to utilize as well. I also noticed while I was browsing the site that Flickr also allows the user to upload a video feed. I could offer extra credit for anyone who chooses to do this in the target language orally. I might also incorporate this as an activity for later on in the year. The most important thing that I would have to remember to do is to make sure that I keep the settings for this site that we create as a private site so as to keep it limited to only the class to have access to this information. What w terrific way to engage learners of today!
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