More on Flickr

Today I spent quite a bit of time uploading photos of the kids to my Flickr account.  Last year, I had used Shutterfly.  What precipitated the change in photo sites was that my classroom web site company, Yola, supported the use of Flickr photos.

Here's my URL to Yola:  http://sharonobrienrippen.synthasite.com/

Changing to Flickr would allow me to get one step closer to eliminating my Wetpaint Wiki that I am currently using to display my Google docs calendar and to embed videos.

Here's the URL to my Wetpaint Wiki:  http://sharonobrienrippen.wetpaint.com/ 

Alecia, however, recently gave me a helpful site that will allow me to embed videos that I make during the school year.  Yeah, Alecia!  (While photographs are SO much fun to share, there's something about videos that make parents think you're a technological genius. :))

Here's the URL to the site that Alecia shared with me:  http://www.vimeo.com/

The process of setting up an account was pretty painless.  The part that took a lot of time was inviting all of my parents.  Now, I only have eleven parents - although most have several e-mails.  I know that there HAS to be an easier method of adding group e-mails to Flickr than the way that I managed to do it - but I don't know what it is yet.  Something to investigate.  I used the school PCR directory, highlighted all of my parents' e-mail addresses, and put them into an advanced search box.  I had to do a lot of highlighting and deleting in order to get rid of extraneous information that was pasted onto Flickr, but I think that all parents were included and should now receive an invitation to join.  I created a Second-Grade Group that I am the administrator of, and I made it private so that only my invited "friends" are allowed to share and post photos.  (I guess my parents are my friends - until they prove to be otherwise! :) )  After I talk to Paula, my teaching partner, I will invite the other second-grade parents to join too, since I often take pictures of their children when second-graders are together as a group.

Flickr's organization and vocabulary is quite different from that of Shutterfly, so I had to play around with all of its functions to see what was meant by a "set" and a "group."  Shutterfly let me create "albums" whereas Flickr lets me create "sets."  It's all the same function but different vernacular - so I sat with my mouth open, with a confused screen stare for a while.  This happens a lot.  But you know what?  The more you keep going, the less confused you become.  My son is a lot less apt to make fun of me now.  He is starting to respect my tech knowledge - although I'm definitely not up to snuff yet.  That's my ultimate goal: to be as capable as a young person.  I don't want them to have anything over on me!