Group items tagged

Even though I presented on Flickr, I thought I'd share it here, too. I had never thought of using Flickr for second language teaching purposes, but it has a lot of potential as a teaching tool. I particularly like the mapping option which allows you to search for pictures of a particular item or concept in a particular city/region/country. This would be great for writing or speaking classes that have a compare/contrast component.

Some of us discussed pecha kuchu last semester in Dr. Stoller's foundations course. It's a method of presentation that literally translates to "death by power point." The idea came about because people were getting so bored at large conferences when presenters were going on and on about there research. This style of presentation allows each slide to be up for 20 seconds and the total time is 6 minutes and 40 seconds. Presenters were not allowed to go over this allotted time. Students in Dr. Stoller's class last semester were given 5 minutes to present on the research we did all semester. Personally, I found it difficult to present all the information I wanted to, but I also was surprised by how much I could actually fit into five minutes. So how does this relate to language learning/teaching? Pecha Flickr is a program that allows you to type in a tag word, like fish or dog. Then, it will pull up different pictures on Flickr that are tagged with those words for 20 seconds at a time. Students could give a mock presentation or even be writing sentences for the 20 seconds each picture is shown. This is a creative and fun way to get students to think on the spot using random pictures. Although I feel this would be a fun and creative way to get students thinking, I would be cautious using this because some of the pictures are tagged inaccurately. For example, I typed in fish as the tag and the second picture was a couple kissing. However, this might be a unique way to bring in slang and informal language. Kissing with a fish face?

Instagram is another photo sharing program that, like Flickr, lets students upload and describe their own pictures, and browse other users' photos. Although not targeted towards L2 learners, it lends itself to the creative side of learning by letting students find pictures they're interested in and describing or writing about them.