The Search for the Ultimate Photo Sharing Tool

Having basically no experience with photo sharing, I wasn't certain which photo sharing tool I wanted to use, so I decided to experiment with a few. As a Google user, I was intrigued by “Picasa”, but noticed that it didn’t seem to have the same buzz as others like Flickr, Webshots, or Photobucket. My parents used the Picasa software to organize their photos and do some picture editing, but hadn’t used it for sharing. I thought I’d give Picasa a try.

I promptly became somewhat frustrated with Picasa. I had been on a bit of a techie high after creating my first blog with relative ease, but came down with a bit of a crash after trying Picasa. I didn’t realize I’d have to download software on to my computer and wondered if you needed to with others. Still, I bit the bullet and downloaded the software and uploaded some pictures. (I was disappointed that I couldn’t “drag and drop” though.) I didn’t find Picasa as user friendly as some other software, like the Blog tool I had just used for example.

Since we had just celebrated my son’s third birthday on the weekend, I created my Picasa album of this celebration. This made me nervous about making the album public (see more on this debate below). I created the album as “sign-in” and invited my immediate family to view it. My husband and mother who have gmail accounts were able to view it, but my father, who doesn’t, was asked to join before he could view – what a pain. (This album remains as “sign-in”, but if you’d like an invite to view it, please send me an e-mail.) The other choices for security are “public” and “unlisted”. I hope to experiment with these options too and find the balance between my comfort level and ease of sharing.

For a comparison, I decided to give Flickr a try. I didn’t want to spend a lot of time creating an album if I didn’t like the tool and I didn’t want to create something else that I wouldn’t publicly share. Upon searching my photos (stored on my computer), I found a couple of photos I took after a rather humourous attempt to make French Bread that looked more like naan! (These are available at www.flickr.com/photos/cardcomments/) I was pleased that I didn’t need to download software and I did find it easy to use, but I wasn’t completely enamored by the results. (Searching the hundreds of photos stored on my computer for various random shots taken on an unknown date made me really see the value in tagging!)

I have used various sites (usually the “photolab” Superstore site) to upload and then order printed pictures. Like many others, this site stores your photos and you have an option to share (via e-mail). It lacks the ability to tag, map, or even describe in a meaningful way, but the site has served my personal needs fine.

For a hobby, I enjoy scrapbooking and I suspect I am looking for a way to create albums that are more in line with scrapbooks. I am looking for a more creative way to display and share my personal photos with my friends and family. Because I assumed that this exists, I “googled” “digital scrapbooking” and found a number of sites. The name “Smilebox” seemed familiar to me (I think a friend had once shared photos of his daughter with me this way), so I decided to try Smilebox.

Again, I had to download software (why does this bother me so much?), but I found Smilebox relatively easy to use and definitely enjoyed the finished product more than Picasa and Flickr. (See album posted to my Blog earlier today.) It was closer to the scrapbooks that I create, but, I will admit, much less time consuming! When I was finished creating my Smilebox scrapbook, I could e-mail it and/or post it (Facebook, Blogger, etc.), but I felt that the photos were less accessible than they are on a site like Picasa or Flickr. As a means to store photos, it came up a bit short. I also recognized (due to my previously mentioned picture hunt) that a tag feature was missing.

I still feel that with more time to explore the plethora of photo sharing sites that I could find one that found a balance between ease of photo sharing, interesting finished product, and useful photo storage. I even wonder if it exists within Picasa and/or Flickr but, again, I need more time (and expertise) to determine this. This will be an ongoing goal for me.

Public Vs. Private – What a debate!

As aforementioned, public sharing makes me nervous. There are many who support the idea of “public” sharing, including Will Richardson and Lee Lefever of Common Craft. However, it is my feeling that there is also a widespread belief that being public is too dangerous. I am somewhere in the middle. I have no issues with publicly sharing images of accessible places, especially common ones like the Eiffel Tower, but I feel inclined to be much more protective of images of my children and other people’s children.

That said, I do post pictures of my children on Facebook (fb), supposedly to be shared only with my fb “friends”. Is this putting faith in something well beyond my control? How do I know this is being honoured?

Photo Sharing Implications for Classroom & Library

I love the idea of sharing pictures taken in the classroom or at different school events. As a classroom teacher I have often taken many pictures throughout the year and I have some of them printed to be included with the student’s portfolios. (Maybe one day I’ll be tech-savvy enough to move to digital portfolios too!) If I utilized a photo sharing tool, the students and parents would have access to the pictures and see more of the great learning and activities occurring. This would be a wonderful way to share special moments with families. This sharing could begin as something that I develop and could easily, even at the young grades that I teach, be turned over to the students.

Photo sharing could also easily be a tool that the students could use to share parts of their lives that are outside of school with their classmates. When parents take their children on trips (as they inevitably do in the middle-to-upper class neighbourhood where I teach) they often want to know what work they should complete and I do not usually have anything that meaningful to suggest, but I see great potential for a photo essay slide show that could be shared with the class. As a Grade One teacher, I also see a very direct link with the Manitoba (MB) Social Studies curriculum. There is a cluster that deals with the different groups, clubs, and heritages of the students. This is usually completed with heavy parental participation/information sharing. Creating their individual photo streams would be an excellent way to demonstrate this information to the class. Learning about community (their local community and comparing to others) is also an important topic in primary grades according to the MB Social Studies curriculum. Photo streams could be used to take students on a virtual tour of various places in their own community and communities.

I am confident that there are many other direct links at other grades that would be interesting to teach, explore, and/or assess through photo streams. I also can see the implications for differentiated instruction. Many children struggle with demonstrating their understanding of various concepts through traditional pencil and paper tasks, but shine when given a chance to demonstrate their knowledge through a different media.

However, as I get excited over the possibilities, the devil’s advocate in me starts to wonder about the public vs private debate again. I am not comfortable enough to suggest that everything should be public like some advocates. I think I am much more comfortable suggesting that for each individual assignment/task the level of security needed would have to be considered. (I feel that this is a bit of a “cop out”, but as a newbie, it is all I can muster right now!)

Security features like Picasa’s “unlisted” security setting may be a solution. The website associated with the photos is designed to be unique enough that it won’t be guessed, but it does exist as a website on the web for people (hopefully only those given the address) could view.

One thing that continued to surface while I was reading about photo sharing and utilizing photos in the classroom was the idea of “creative commons” (cc). I found a simple video that explained the basics of this concept. Essentially, if you are going to use a photo that you found, for example a photo of a mountain range for a geography lesson, be sure that it has been granted “cc”. Under some of the cc licenses you can even manipulate the content and still respect the owner’s rights. Flickr allow the photos to be searched by license type (an option in “Advance Search”).

What’s next?

The questions rolling around in my head seem to be drowning out the new information at times. “How do you stay on topic” could be the most pressing one! I start reading about one thing, but see an interesting link and end up on various tangents! (At one point I was having a problem loading a page and my husband suggested I close my browser and start over. I balked at his suggestion and pointed out how many tabs I currently had open!) For example, I think it all started with the Trailblazer page for blogging, which led me to an interesting blogger (A GeekyMomma’s Blog) and there I saw “shelfari” and proceeded to create an account and play around there… completely off task and “wasting” my baby’s nap!

As previously stated, I’d like to continue to explore the various photo sharing tools to see if I can create something with a scrapbook feel to it, but that still had many of the noteworthy, beneficial functions of mainstream photo sharing sites. This would be a better match between where technology is leading us and where my interests are.