How I use.. My phone and Flickr

One idea for a series of posts I had was looking at how I use specific pieces of technology in the classroom, so I’ll kick it off with this, and with some luck a few more might be forthcoming in the next few weeks.

Back in the summer I finally got my hands on a Smart phone – the HTC Desire HD, and I quickly started looking for ways that it could increase my productivity in the classroom. In particular, I was looking for ways of taking all those things that I would say ‘oh yeah, I’ll do that before next lesson’, and then struggle to do, and be able to do them straight away.

I’ve got a free Flickr account for school stuff, and I added the account to the phone, so I can now quickly and easily upload images which can then be accessed by students. Here’s a few ways in which I’ve found it useful:

1. Take photos of the posters / projects made by students in class, which they then need to download and stick in their books

2. In ICT I’ve used it to take pictures of student’s artwork so they can grab them and include them into their own digital projects

3. Take photos of notes from the whiteboard which can be used as reference by students completing work

4. I can also use tags to group work by specific classes together, and put a link to that tagged group in the class edmodo group. The advantage with doing this rather than just putting the images straight onto edmodo is that I can upload multiple images at once.

So that’s one way I’ve been using my phone to achieve more, and faster than I could before. More will follow, but please do add your ideas in the comments below.