Image source: http://www.tabblo.com/partners/flickr

Last year, my family adopted a “homemade or gifts of time” approach to the holidays. It made the holiday so much more fun! Instead of spending time frustrated in long lines in shopping centers or jockeying for parking spaces at the mall, I spent my time in creativity mode.

I’m realizing that “homemade” can be digital and high-tech, too. For example, few of the second grade boys who work in our school library media center each morning have made podcasting CDs for their families for holiday gifts, complete with hand-drawn labels, and we’ve also wrapped nature poems in ribbons for gifts. I find that the act of preparing a piece of student work to be shared with others often infuses the project with extra energy. (The first time we gave podcasting CDs as gifts, the student and I strategized the number that needed to be burned. But while my back was turned, he popped a few more into the computer! That’s exactly the kind of thing that helps us know we’ve hit a chord in a kid.)

This year, I’ve been following a lot of crafting and quilting blogs to get ideas for my family’s gifts. (This is an amazing online community … something I’ll write about in more depth later.) Today, I found a link to this HP/Flickr toys site, which lets you access your Flickr albums, select favorite images, and drag them into the template. The system generates a PDF, which you print, cut out, and assemble. Wouldn’t these cubes make nifty gift tags, ornaments, or little gift boxes?

The site also lets you make 8.5 x 11″ posters for free, as well as order photo books. I’m looking at the 4″x4″ book for $9.95 … the price is so low that I’m willing to try it out.

Join the Conversation: Educational Uses for Photo Cubes

We can’t overlook the fact that technology motivates people.  So how could we use this free photo cube tool in an educational setting?

One useful tool might be to remember that Flickr accounts can be private and not shared online, whic could help with online student safety.  My own Flickr account is private, but I can authorize some Flickr tools to access those private photos for projects.

Here are some quick thoughts — what can you add?

• Autobiography: Ask students to find and upload five photos that reveal something about their life history.  Share the cube with a partner.
• Biography: Students upload five images about a famous person and share them with a partner.
• Science: Students select five images that represent a particular science concept: mutation, adaptation, symmetry, gravity, parasite/host, etc.
• Social studies: Students select images that represent a core democratic value.
• Creative writing: Students select five images, create the cube, then swap with a partner.  The partner uses the images on the cube as a story starter or basis for a poem.
• Math: Students select images that illustrate Fibonacci’s number.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 7th, 2007 at 4:03 pm and is filed under Photos, Gadgets and Tools, Books, Flickr. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.