I would guess a year or so ago I looked at the site Pics4Learning and thought it was a good idea but there wasn’t a lot there. I moved on and forgot about it. Well, this year I’m making a greater effort to begin teaching my students the importance of using pictures they have permission to use and how to give credit for pictures. While looking for appropriate sites I came across Pics4Learning again. This time I took a closer look and was happy that there seemed to be a larger selection of photos, or maybe I just didn’t take enough time to thoroughly explore it last time I was there. There are close to 50 different topics to choose from. They even have pictures from the Library of Congress. This came in very handy when I was looking for pictures of the presidents for a wiki project I did with my 5th graders.  I think this site is especially wonderful for elementary students. The site is safe, easy to search and easy to see who to give credit for the photo.

I also noticed that anyone can upload pictures. So, I have become a cheerleader for the site! I would like to encourage everyone to add photos. I  belong to several groups on Flickr and know there are many edtech folks out there that have pictures that would be great contributions to this site.

I had a couple of questions and contacted the site. Melinda Kolk responded very quickly. Here are my questions and her answers:

Is it possible to do a batch upload?

Because of the citation information needed for each image, there isn’t a batch upload on the site. You can however, send a CD to us with the photos and a completed spreadsheet. (Contact Melinda Kolk for spreadsheet info.)

Do you have a size preference for the pictures?

This is really a hard one. It is always nice to have large images for resolution purposes, but really large images take a lot of bandwidth. I wouldn’t do scenery shots at less than 1024×768 or 768 x1024, but if you are shooting a particular bird, or flower, or something at 600 across would probalby be fine because a student would use it in a project as an image that supports their work.

So please go take a look at the site and give some serious thought to adding to the picture collection.

I’m beginning to hate leaving home without my camera. I notice so many more great photo opporturnities since beginning the daily project. I really think it is helping me to be more aware of my surroundings. I have a particular interest in nature photography with a focus on macro. I’m putting my photo right into my Photo Journey blog as well. It is so easy to do from Flickr that it seemed silly not to do it. So the project is getting me to write at least a little bit and often a short story each day. For someone who has never been particularly fond of writing that is a good thing!

I take a look at photos as people post links on Plurk and then on the weekends I try to look through the flickr groups as well and leave comments. It’s really interesting to see the variety of photos and I’m so impressed with the quality. I try to make sure I’m leaving comments because I truly appreciate the comments I receive. The one group I haven’t spent much time on is the 366-1. I finally stopped by today and found out they are having a focus for many of the days such as Macro Monday or Black/White Friday. I’m going back to jot those down and try to start doing those as well. I figure it will be a way to help me grow as a photographer. I’ve started bookmarking some photo sites as well and hope to someday have some time to do some reading.

If you’re interested in photography and haven’t joined a group yet you should give it a try. I think of it as ‘me time’. I’ve made it through the first 24 days without missing a photo. Will I keeep it up for all 365 days? Time will tell but I hope so.