501 Photo sharing Blog Post

If you take a person to a diagram, then you can show most clearly that learning is recollection. -Plato

Clearly, Plato would appreacite the intutive nature of creating social networks founded on identifying patterns and similarities through pictures and photos.

Discussion of the tool in terms of my own personal learning

Photo sharing isn’t a common practice for me since my camera was ‘accidentally’ tossed like a Hail Mary NFL Football pass by one of my kindergarten students a couple of years ago during class-time.

A couple of weeks ago I wanted to start-off my blogging experience by attending to all forms of social media to get my blog up and running. I didn’t realize how much work goes into creating various accounts and profiles that support one’s primary social media platform, which for me is Blogger.

This week I applied my skills to navigating a few different photo-sharing sites to get a feel of which one seems best for me. I followed the advice of Singer Gordon and Stephens (2006), “It might seem overwhelming at first, but worry not—the best thing you can do is take some time and explore. Dive into some image pools, surf some tags you find interesting, and upload your own pictures to the site with a free or “pro” account. Play around with the features and some of the Flickr Toys that have sprung up because of the open nature of Flickr’s database. Try some tagging. Join the Libraries and Librarians group and share pictures of your building.” Diving into the pool of web activity that is not a part of my personal routine wasn’t so much risky as much as it was humbling.

I started off with Flickr because it is the most well-known hosting sites for photos. I found that Flickr required a Yahoo account, which is odd because Flickr is so well synchronized with the Google Suite of tools, that I assumed Google maintained ownership of Flickr. I would have liked to have my photos archived within my overarching Google account, to allow for seamless navigation between sites, accounts, and multimedia. But, as I mentioned, Flickr is supported by, and supports Blogger, which eased my transition into uploading some .gif and .jpeg images to my new Yahoo-based Flickr account.

I was disappointed to find that my animated .gif images don’t appear as animated when hosted on Flickr and embedded on Blogger. Since I wanted to incorporate .gif’s, I tried to load them directly to Blogger, and have them show as animation from within my blog. Regrettably, Blogger doesn’t show animated .gif’s as animation either.

In a scramble to find a host for my animated pictures, I turned to Photobucket, and found that site hosts and embeds animation directly to blogs, with animation.

Reflections on the process of learning about the tool

I found myself actually having to take time to think of tags for my photos. And, only after completing extensive professional reading about photo sharing as a social networking tool, do I understand why I am having so much difficulty with assigning tags to my uploads, and to my blog posts. “Although social tags do not constitute a controlled vocabulary, a contributor who does not use the preferred tagging vocabulary of the social network will make it difficult for others to find the resources they have tagged.” (Jacob, Y., Zhang, Z., Foo, S., Yan, E., George, N., and Guo, L., 2009). I kind of got the sense that there must be A Tagger’s Cant, or Taggiquette about assigning labels to my creations, but discerning the rules from others’ actions didn’t create parameters to guide my own use of tags. “Perhaps most problematic are the variant word forms used by different taggers to refer to the same or very similar concepts. These tag variations reflect individual preferences for describing online resources, but they also underscore the primary difference between the folksonomies that evolve on social tagging sites and the controlled vocabularies that have traditionally been used in formal indexing systems (see Universal Tag Identifier section, above). While these individualized folksonomies support retrieval by the original tagger, they require more effort and creativity on the part of the searcher, who must think of all possible variations on a term or concept in order to retrieve resources on a social bookmarking site.” (Jacob, Y., et al., 2009). I know how much I want others to find my uploads, and really, my blog and the material I embed, link and attach to my ideas are there for others to enjoy, so the tags aren’t so much about me, but about how others can use keywords to interface with a computer program to find a human affective connotations of images that reflect the experiences they are connecting to.

It was interesting to read how “the Library of Congress is using Flickr to share its massive collection of photos, allowing the public to tag photos—which in many cases had minimal or no information— with identifying names or locations.” (Funk, 2009). I wonder how many archived photos form the past will eventually, someday be ordered and categorized with links to my own blog posts, links, ideas, etc…

So, what about using photo sharing tools? I remember a couple of years ago when I held office for our local Library Board of Directors, the topic of social networking sites arose, and limited discussion about networking tools followed the initial interest in using Web 2.0 for hosting library-related materials. I was in favor of having library staff receive training in the use of Web 2.0 tools, but the issue didn’t get a lot of attention because of other more pressing requirements. I wish I had read Singer Gordon and Stephens (2006) article "Tech tips for every librarian" when I had voice to speak for the future of our library system. Singer Gordona and Stephens outline ten ways to integrate photo sharing into work and networking. The article provides explanation of each of the ten points highlighted below:

Ten Ways to Use Flickr
Armed with your digital camera or scanner, a Flickr pro account, and access to your own library blog or Web pages, here are a few things you can do to make your online presence more interactive and much more fun:
1. Edit that profile and make some contacts.
2. Tag your images.
3. Display images via RSS.
4. Create sets of your programs, events, and specialties
5. Host images for your blog or Web site.
6. Use notes for HTML links and more.
7. Engage users with those images.
8. Share the library’s history.
9. Use some Flickr Toys to make some snazzy graphics.
10. Allow Flickr access on library computers.
These 10 tips just scratch the surface for all of the uses for Flickr in our institutions—I didn’t even cover applications in K–12 schools or library programs. Imagine students using Flickr to create their own cards for a class project. Sites such as this, paired with the Flickr Toys site, can be powerful tools for extending your online presence.

Johnson (2008) provides three simple ideas for making the use of photo sharing a more enjoyable and practical experience for novice Flickr users:



I am totally impressed with the range of tools available through Photobucket. I tried using Picasa, but the Terms of Service for using it require the user to save and install an .exe additional program into their computer and I tend to shy away from such programs. I wish that Picasa had been available as a Google-hosted Application Programming Interface through a standalone site, but as of now, it isn’t like that.

Discussion of the tool in terms of teaching and learning

I think the Trailfire video was the best introduction for me learn about Photo sharing. In general, the Trailfire videos are ALL amazing, and their simplicity takes away any worry a user can have about learning how to use a program. Many of the website and journal articles I encountered about the topic of photo sharing that were written more than seven or eight years ago seem to lack expressiveness of the breadth that photo sharing sites offer to users. I think that our present technology really has grown considerably in the past decade that the closest ideas from ten years ago that match the tools available to us today are the projections and predictions developers made back then. Even so, I read two amazing articles “Perspectives on Social Tagging (2009)”, and “Flickr Image Tagging: Patterns Made Visible (2007),” about how users interests needs have changed in the past few years, and are changing the nature of the internet as a composite whole.

I encountered an awesome blog that I have in my Bookmarks, RSS, and blog list, it is http://tametheweb.com/ I found TameTheWeb to be full of practical ideas and excellent tips for both novice and experienced web users.

While my workplace discourages employees from using social networking tools, I can’t imagine how I could ever go back to not using my photobucket account, like for the rest of my life. The readings I did especially impacted me to realize that it is the voice of average users through tags, titles, descriptors, and comments that add a human voice to a digital universe that is leading us toward what some call the Semantic Web. I really hope that my voice can contribute to the new lexicon of humanity through my affective connection to postings. At this point I wish I could find a better guideline for creating tags, titles, descriptors, and comments that would help me to relate better to the established community of Web-2.0-tool users.

On a personal level, I remember the first time I ever went away from home by myself, I felt uneasy, and I cried because there wasn’t anything familiar when I was there without friends and family near. It took about a week to get my bearings in my new location, and I quickly made acquaintances, but the most important thing that helped me to get used to being on my own was to be in a routine. Likewise with this new technology of sharing my ideas and the images of my life with others, it will take repeated usage and integration into my existing patterns of behavior to make this tool second nature for me.

One question I still have is: how I can use a photo hosting site to measure the Golden Ration of my facial proportions to determine how I measure up to Da Vinci and Pacioli to see how comparable I am to the rest of the people who upload pictures of themselves?

To see the images I worked with, my photobucket account is found at: http://s888.photobucket.com/home/CNRGradio

-Rob


References

Beaudoin, J. (2007). "Flickr image tagging: Patterns made visible. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (Online) (Oct/Nov), 34(1), 26-29.

Funk, M. (2009) Testing the web 2.0 waters. American Libraries. (Jan/Feb), 48-51.

Jacob, Y., Zhang, Z., Foo, S., Yan, E., George, N., and Guo, L. (2009). Perspectives on social tagging. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60(12), 2388-2401.

Johnson, D. (2008) Upgrade your Flickr experience with free tools. PC World 26(3), 126.

Singer Gordon, R., and Stephens, M. (2006) Tech tips for every librarian Computers in Libraries, (Nov/Dec), 44-45.