Thing 7 Exploring Flickr

Flickr is an awesome photo-sharing Website.  It uses tags to make it easy to search for just the right photo.  You can set up your own account and add your photos, tag and caption your photos, and share them with your friends, family, and the whole world if you so choose. There are more groups than you can imagine.  Groups can be made public, private (invite only) or private.  Groups serve as a pool for photos and videos and they share a discussion board.

My project focuses on the Great Depression.  I wanted to incorporate photographs for my fifth graders that will serve as writing prompts as well as providing them with information about this particular time in history.  Standard 5.5.08.2 Describe how the Great Depression affected American society as a whole could easily be addressed by looking at several pictures and allowing the students time to write about one that speaks to them.  Within Flickr I was able to find a Great Depression group that contains 270 photos!  It was so easy to find awesome pictures.  I'd love to give this link to my students and let them go for it, however, after reviewing the photos, I wouldn't be able to let them loose.  One of the pictures contained a naked boy, which would not make my students' parents happy!  Another photograph contained foul language.  It's better to err on the side of caution.  I'll pick and choose carefully the photos I'll be sharing for my students writing assignment.
 
The photo I chose to blog about, was one that most people have seen.  It too came from the Great Depression times and shows a totally exhausted woman in tattered clothing holding a baby, while two young children cling to her and hide their heads.  The caption says that this photo was taken at a pea picking camp during the Great Depression and that this migrant mother just sold the wheels off her truck for money to feed her children.  The desperation of the times is so clearly seen in this woman's face and furrowed brow.  How strong she sits so that her children feel protected, however, her face tells the world that she is desperate.  This particular photo wouldn't upload, so checked with some friends and learned that the picture that I blogged about is copy protected, meaning that I can't add it in to my blog -- learned something new! -- but I wanted to share anyway, so I linked it.  Then it occurred to me in one of my middle of the night wakings (I REALLY NEED TO RUN!) that I could do a screen shot of my migrant mother, too.

 

So, since I couldn't share that photo, I shared another from the Great Depression.  The reason I chose this picture was that, honestly, it reminded me of my grandmother's house.  She literally lived in a tar paper shack before she moved in with my aunt.  This would have been a mansion for the many migrant families in the 1930s.  Another reason I chose this picture was that I could.  I have spent hours trying to find pics that I could upload.  I have found that a lot of people remove the share feature on their pictures, so it may be easier to take my own pictures and then upload them to my blog.  Hmmmm, maybe I'll become the next Pioneer Woman.  Right!?

Image Citation:
RetroSnapshots (no real name given). “Great Depression Migrant Mother.” Usedcarspecialist. 7 Feb 2009(uploaded). 20 Sept 2011 http://www.flickr.com/photos/45198576@N00/3260877191/.
Dan Iannone. “Great Depression Image 18.” Dan Iannone originalby LIFE Magazine. 25 Nov 2008 (uploaded). 20 Sept 2011 http://www.flickr.com/photos/don-iannone/3058899454/.