Web 2.0. Resources for the Classroom: Photograph and Video Sharing

Photo and video sharing sites are online databases of personal photos and videos uploaded by the general public.

These sites enable users to create their own personal libraries of photos and videos that they can choose to share or not share with other users over the internet. These sites also enable users to search for and store photos and videos posted by other internet users. Users are able to assign their own tags and categories to the files that they upload into their databases.

Originally, these sites were intended for users to share their homemade photos and videos, however, over the years, many users have been posting commercial content (sometimes illegally) onto these sites. In turn, various media companies have been using these sharing sites as venues for free advertising. 

Nonetheless, photo and video sharing sites are an important part of the social web, enabling users to post comments on each other's offerings and to search for content based on the tags they created for themselves.

The following are some suggestions on how blogs can be used in the classroom:

* Ask students to build individual online photo or video collections around class topics

* Break the class into small groups and ask them to build a group ablum on a particular course them. Ask them to present their album to the rest of the class as part of an oral presentation assignment

* Ask students to create a video on a class topic and upload it onto YouTube

* Ask students to find and analyze a video on YouTube and to identify potential biases in the video

These suggestions and more can be found at the Web 2.0 Survival Guide website

The following is a list of links to some of the popular photo and video sharing tools on the internet.