A few years ago, I worked with elementary age students on a project that required them to take cameras (disposable) home with them, and take pictures. The lesson was about Values. Students were to spend a week, taking pictures of what was important to them. After bringing the cameras back, at the end of the week, the pictures once developed, were given to the students, who in turn created collages on poster board of their pictures, which they titled themselves. Flickr, could be used to create the same lesson on values. Students can still use disposable cameras. However, technology now allows those pictures to be put on CD or even transferred directly to your media sharing accounts. Students can view other student's pictures and add comments. The activity involves students in their learning. Sharing pictures is an activity that produces non-linguistic representations (imagery), by generating mental pictures. By using non linguistic representations, students have the opportunity to elaborate on his/her knowledge of what they see in the pictures. Students posting the pictures can respond back, and the power of elaboration, students explaining and communicating back and forth, is a good model of how a lesson on values can appear in a concrete form through the use of pictures, in an application like Flickr.
A concern I would have with this type of sharing, is protection against comments that would hurt or harm anyone, based on what they saw. Rules would have to be put in place, to guide responsible, ethical behavior. One of the benefits of an application like Flickr, would be the ability to open up participation of lessons, by connecting with classes around the world.
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