By: Kary | In: Web 2.0 |
I have been mulling an idea over in my head for well over a year now - how to make a flickr-like site that is educationally responsible, viable and USABLE for schools and teachers. One {small part} of me would like the Flickr website unblocked by the district’s firewall. But I know that isn’t possible. I am a member of Flickr and have had many run-ins with some not-so-decent photographs. I certainly don’t search for them. But there they are. The completely pornographic ones are quickly removed by the site administrators {some not so quickly}. But the soft-porn usually remains.
Now before my in-box is flooded with Flickr users who want to upload whatever they choose, please stop. I won’t bother posting your opinions and comments here because this blog post isn’t about trying to get Flickr to do anything. I personally don’t care what type of photos Flickr posts to their databases, because I have no intentions of trying to figure out a way for the district to use the service. Its just too dangerous and risky a path to go down, in my opinion.
No. My goal for this post is to finally try and make an idea I have been mulling over actually come to fruition. I am not a programmer, so whatever happens it will either have to be on a small scale, or we’ll have to find someone else to write the code. But what I want to make happen is the creation of a photo-sharing site on the district’s INTRANET for use by teachers and students.
There will have to be many things that happen before this idea becomes reality:
- We need a server capable of supporting PHP
- Well first off….we need a server
- Many things need to happen that I don’t have a clue about pertaining to firewalls, permissions, and making the server only accessible through the district’s Intranet
- Since it’s accessible through the Intranet, there will need to be some reckoning over whether it will be accessible from home (I hope so)
- THEN we need to tackle the “minor” details of the site’s structure, database, design, implementation, etc. etc.
I feel like so much could happen with a site like this. I was chatting with a colleague the other day and both of our mind’s just raced at the potential uses for such a safe, districted-hosted community; the many other potential uses of a Web 2.0 server such as this are also varied and exciting…
Our Flickr (ED) type of site
Safe Social Networking
Blogs
Wikis
You name it…..
As usual, during my conversation my mind raced and thoughts were flying. Now I’m having a hard time remembering all the great ideas we came up with. By posting this here, my hope is that others can join in on this conversation through their opinions and comments. I’d love to hear what other schools and districts may have implemented that tackled similar issues.
To that end, I have set up a small photo-sharing site that I am going to play with and see how similar (and dissimilar) it is to Flickr. It uses the Coppermine Photo Gallery and is located here. I invite all educators and Coppermine administrators to take a look around and perhaps comment (on this blog) what you think about its potential, and any modifications you know of that might be useful.
Technorati Tags: Flickr EduFlickr Coppermine Web 2.0 Schools 2.0
