I became a heavy user of  images with creative commons licenses when I first started posting content for my students on the web.  At some point, my heavy usage led to feelings of shame.  I realized that I was a free-loader and had contributed nothing.  I didn’t like the feeling, so I began uploading photos to Flickr.  This has assuaged my guilt some, though I am certain that I have used more photos than I have contributed.

Today I learned that someone is actually using one of my small contributions.  The photo (look in the top right corner) has many flaws, but it’s nice not to be a free-loader anymore.  (By the way, did you know that Godzilla had a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame?)

David Wiley has asked those of us in his New Media, Social Media, and Learning Course to post on educational uses of Delicious and Flickr.

Delicious

One of my early posts on this blog (before people who weren’t related to me started to read it) was entitled “Tools for Personal Learning Networks: Social Bookmarking and Citation Management.”  In the post, I reviewed a number of social bookmarking tools that I thought had potential for organizing electronic resources in personal learning networks.  Though the look of the Delicious interface has improved since that post, I still think the post contains an accurate description of my impressions of Delicious.

I switched to Diigo from Delicious for its annotation tools. However, my Diigo account is linked to my old Delicious account so that all of my Diigo Bookmarks are simultaneously bookmarked on my Delicious account.  Because I am primarily a Diigo user, and because I don’t always tag items until after I’ve bookmarked them, my Delicious account reminds me of a neglected flower bed in need of weeding, or in this case, bundling and tagging.

Despite my preference for Diigo, Delicious is still useful for learning.  The “Popular” section of Delicious is a great place to find useful information that I didn’t know I needed  (If I knew I needed it, I probably would have just Googled it . . . or asked somebody.)  Teachers can use Delicious and related tools as a way to store and distribute course readings and electronic course materials.   Additionally, social bookmarking tools provide a way for learners to share resources, with or without the direction of a teacher.  By using a common set of unique tags, individuals can add resources to a collective pool.  In my experience, this works best with a small group.  When a group becomes very large, as exemplified by the Connectivism and Connective Knowledge Course, the simultaneous tagging of the same resources can become unbearably redundant.

If you would like to learn more about the educational applications of social bookmarking, I recommend the following resources:

• “Social Bookmarking Tools” by Teaching Hacks.com
• “Social Bookmarking” on the Classroom2.0 wiki

Flickr

I’ve only had a Flickr account for a few months.  I hadn’t used it since July and had forgotten the Yahoo ID that I had to create in order to register for the service.  To regain access to my pictures, I had to call Yahoo customer service.  Throughout the ordeal, one question kept running through my mind: Why won’t Flickr accept an OpenID?

My most significant educational use of Flickr has been searching Flickr for images with creative commons licenses to use in presentations and on class websites.  (My original impetus for creating my Flickr account was to contribute images so I didn’t feel like such a free-loader.)  Other educators are more creative than I.    The best list of educational uses of Flickr that I’ve found is contained in the article, “Using Flickr in the Classroom“.  It’s only two pages long, and if you are a classroom educator, I strongly recommend that you read it.

There are also many application that have been based off of the Flickr API.  My favorites are fairly simple.

• Flickr related tag browser – I think it’s fun.
• Flickr Storm – I like this one because it makes it easy to find copyright information and to contact the photographer.

If you would like to look for more tools, here’s a big long list for you.

• The Great Flickr Tools Collection