Greasemonkey and Flickr for the adventurous

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Judy O'Connell

Some of my students are busy creating slideshare presentations, that we will be able to mill around, listen to their thoughts, and discuss ideas via Slideshare zipcast. The exciting thing about this is also the opportunity to help them develop new ways of managing online tools -AND images for work like this.

A tweet this morning from friend Darcy Moore asking Dean Groom (yes, he’s a friend too!) about image attribution in his recent blog post reminded me that I should crosspost my tip to my students about my favourite image attribution tool right here too!

Here it is:

I promised a while back that I would share some more interesting ways to manage your image work online. Tips and tricks abound, but this one from Alan Levine is the niftiest around, so I’ve decided to share it first.

cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by Sebastián-Dario

So what am I talking about? Well of course, as you prepare your presentation (or indeed work on other image-related tasks in your professional work) one of the things you are doing is noting where the image comes from and providing a hyperlinked attribution. If, like me, you are backed into a corner for time, then you will most certainly end up at Flickr. (Even if not in a rush I still prefer to use FlickrCC, and think laterally in my search terms! I also love the new things it throws up for me.)

There are a few reasons for this:
1. You can store your own images at Flickr and build your own collections
2. You can ‘favourite’ other peoples CC. images (something I regularly do as I collect images for my various bits of work)
3. Now you can also install a nice GreaseMonkey script to make the image attribute even easier.

Here’s what it’s about – read on, only if you are keen for an adventure!

Alan Levine has written a Flickr Attribution Helper – a browser script that embeds easy to copy attribution text to creative commons licensed flickr images. Greasemonkey is an add-on for Firefox browser. Once Greasemonkey is installed, you have the ability to add all sorts of magical things to the functionality of your browser.

To be honest, the only one I have ever added is Alan’s Flickr Attribtion Helper – but its insanely useful! See the image above – that red tee-shirt and the attribution were simply copied from the HTML box and pasted here in the blog! Done in one go!

Stephen Ridgeway, from New South Wales Australia, created a video that explains how to use the Flickr CC Attribution helper (thank goodness – a blog post by itself would never do it!). Download and install the Flickr Attribution helper (after you have installed Greasmonkey). Then watch the magic happen every time you go to a Flickr image!

Find Free Images Online (heyjude.wordpress.com)
20+ Great Greasemonkey Scripts for Improving Your Twitter Experience (chicagosocial.wordpress.com)
Flickr Still Beats Facebook for Photographers (blogs.photopreneur.com)

Visual Literacy Competency Standards

Posted on February 15, 2011 by Judy O'Connell

The ACRL Image Resources Interest Group has released a draft of their Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education (pdf).

The ACRL Image Resources Interest Group provides a forum for ongoing discussion of the unique issues presented by the development and support of interdisciplinary image resources in academic libraries. http://connect.ala.org/node/78932

The increasing dominance of images and visual media in contemporary culture is changing what it means to be literate in the 21st century. Today’s society is highly visual, and visual imagery is no longer supplemental to other forms of information. New digital technologies have made it possible for almost anyone to create and share visual media. Yet the pervasiveness of images and visual media does not necessarily mean that individuals are able to critically view, use, and produce visual content. Individuals must develop these essential skills in order to engage capably in a visually‐oriented society. Visual literacy empowers individuals to participate fully in a visual culture.

They are encouraging comments and feedback through March 31st, 2011, on their blog or by email.

ACRL/IRIG Visual Literacy Standards (acrlvislitstandards.wordpress.com)
ACRL | Guidelines for Media Resources in Academic Libraries (ala.org)

NeoK12 makes learning easy!

Posted on June 7, 2009 by Judy O'Connell

As the site says, kids learn best by ‘seeing’ the world. I love embedding videos as teasers into learning programs, or as nuggets of information at the right point in the learning sequence. So I was pretty pleased when I came across neoK12 in my RSS feeds.

NeoK12 offers a great way to search for free online educational videos from all over the Internet. 30 second search provided me with some videos that will be perfect for a Year 7 science research project starting next term. Just saved myself heaps of time, AND the videos will mean that I can embed them right into the wiki!

I recommend taking a peek. Covers just about every subject area you might want. Even better… apparently all lessons and videos have been screened by K-12 teachers.

Flickr project to host Library of Congress photos

Posted on January 20, 2008 by Judy O'Connell

Here’s a really interesting opportunity for some visual literacy and historical analysis work with your history students!

Hot update: PhotosNormandi thanks to a quick comment to this post from Patrick Peccatte. This is another stunning collection for history students.

The Library of Congress and photosharing site Flickr today announced a partnership that will put photos from the LoC’s collection online. These are public-domain, copyright-free photos from the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information and The George Grantham Bain Collection, for which no known copyright exists. The collections will be housed on the LoC’s Flickr page.

Interesting project – and they are relying on ‘us’ to provide tags for the images!

So Flickr has launched a new tagging initiative called The Commons – “your opportunity to contribute to describing the world’s public photo collections.”

The Commons – our chance to tag or comment on images!

The photos, which are already available on the Library’s photo and prints page (along with over 1 million others), may not be on Flickr permanently. The length of the pilot program will be determined by the amount of interest and activity shown by Flickr users, according to the LoC.

Read more at ReadWrite Web, WebWare, Alan Poon’s Blog.