ETC BP10_2009102_Flickr Lessons

As a reading teacher, I constantly struggle to find ways to teach important concepts such as making inferences, drawing conclusions, and making predictions. As creative as I can be with my lessons, the concepts themselves remain a challenge for the students. Though environmental factors and socioeconomic status may play a part in the academic shortfalls, there is certainly more that I can do to encourage growth.

There is no doubt in my mind that even the lowest of my readers can still achieve success on the X Box 360 or PSP they have at home. Though I would like to blame the video game industry for making print media insignificant, I would rather embrace the available technology and try to create a more engaging environment for my students. In this case, I choose Flickr, the online photo sharing site by Yahoo.

Using Flickr, I envision a lesson focusing on making inferences. To start, students would perform image searches and save their images to Flickr. From there, students would analyze the photos to infer what the setting and situation is. They could then add text to the photos to add dialogue. My goal would be to have students infer who the characters are, where they are, where they came from, what they are doing, and why they are doing it.

Enhancing students' creative thinking skills in this case would be wonderful. Students may be used to using magazine photos and images in text books for this type of activity in the past. Now, though, the addition of technology and the ability to modify photos will increase student interest in the activity. Once engaged, students will be more likely to commit to the task and get something out of it.