How the organization of image sharing services provide a model for the development of Learning Object Repositories

1. Image Sharing Services Point The Way
for Learning Object Repositories
[2005]
By
Mary Harrsch
Network & Management Information Systems
College of Education, University of Oregon
Just as personal computing began in a text-based format and evolved into a multimedia-
rich environment, photoblogs are now encompassing many of the same elements
traditionally available only in high-end media publications. Furthermore, the
development of moblogs – mobile logs – has opened up personal publishing to real-time
on-the-scene reporting of observations facilitated by the ubiquity of multimedia
messaging-capable cell devices.
What exactly is a photoblog?
'A photoblog is a type of blog that is regularly updated with photos. Some photoblogs
focus only on photography, while others have photos in addition to other content. All
photoblogs, however, consider photos to be an important part of their chronological
blogging structure.' Source - Photoblogs.org FAQs
What’s the difference between a photoblog and a moblog?
“Moblogging is a blanket term that covers a variety of related practices. At its simplest,
moblogging (from ‘mobile web logging’) is merely the use of a phone or other mobile
device to publish content to the World Wide Web, whether that content be text, images,
media files, or some combination of the above.” Source - First International Moblogging
Conference.
So, a moblog can be a photoblog updated using a multimedia-capable mobile device like
a cameraphone.
“An increasing amount of photobloggers update their sites by moblogging technology,
however many of the most serious photobloggers don't - mainly due to image quality
issues as camera phones have relatively low megapixel ratings (although they are
climbing) and transferring large files via such technology is not really feasible.” - The
Digital Photography Blog
To engage in this enhanced blogging experience a person needs a blog hosting service
that provides e-mail connectivity and can accept photo messages. However, not all
hosting services are created equal. A big red flag to watch out for is the attempt by some
services, such as Text America or Zimoblog, to acquire rights to your images as a
requirement for using their “free” service. The Digital Photography Blog provides an

2. extensive list of hosts offering photoblog services. However, it omits my favorite, Flickr
(http://www.flickr.com).
Most photosharing hosts provide each account with storage space that vary from service
to service. Based on the host’s business model (if any) and available bandwidth, different
hosts have different upload restrictions. Some like, Fotolog, limit free users to upload
only one image per day. Flickr provides even free accounts with 10 MB per user per
month. However, only the last 100 images are viewable from the user’s main page.
Their pro account removes all of these limitations.
All services provide online utilities to title each image and provide a caption. They also
provide privacy tools that allow you to set privacy levels on each photo and decide who
can see them and comment on them.
When you upload photos to Flickr, you can check the box that says "Public" or
"Private". Private photos are completely hidden from everyone except you, but if
you want to be visible to your family or friends, check those boxes. You can
change the privacy of a photo at any time by clicking on the red (for private) or
green (for public) button on the photo. Another thing you can do is set up a
private group and invite your friends and family to join it. If you invite them from
the group's page, they are automatically made a member. You can add photos to
the group's photo pool that every member of the group can see, and if you launch
FlickrLive, you can have a private chat channel in which to share photos. – How
to Get the Most Out of Flickr.
Some hosting services provide upload utilities that enable to you upload more than one
image at a time. Flickr has several utilities that enable you to upload large quantities of
photos at a time. As a Windows user (and an avid digital photographer) I find this greatly
increases my productivity.
I downloaded their "Send To Flickr" Windows XP Explorer Wizard. It enables me to
simply Control click on a number of images in a folder in My Computer and select
“Publish to the Web” from a new option that now appears in the left hand side of the “My
Computer” browsing window. I select Flickr as my publishing service, provide my login
e-mail address and password, then select the size of the maximum image display that I
want. Then I enter in any tags that would be common to all images I have selected for
download and click OK.
Flickr uses the filename for the initial image title. So, I rename all of my images to
whatever title I want them to have before I select them for download so I don’t have to go
back later and rename them all within Flickr. A simple built-in photo manipulator in
Flickr enables a viewer to rotate photos easily in case the images were submitted using a
device without photoediting software, like a cameraphone. However, I would
recommend eventually downloading the images to your PC and applying any image
corrections or enhancements using your favorite photo editor when you have time. (I
prefer Adobe’s Photoshop but there are a number of good image editing programs
available). Since each batch that is uploaded will also share common tags, I upload

3. images by topic group. I can then go into Flickr later and add any additional tags that are
unique to each image.
An image tag field is used in much the same way as the keyword metatag in an HTML
document. It can be searched to help viewers find an image of a particular thing or in a
particular category. Flickr displays all images across all photostreams that are tagged
with the specified tag. This exposes the searcher to related images in much the same way
that Ingenuity Software, developed by Dr. Bruce Horn, collects and cross-links all
references to any subject that the user specifies. Dr. Marti Hearst, an associate professor
at the School of Information Management and Systems, At the University of California,
Berkeley, uses category classification in her new Flamenco search program as well.
"It's for when you are not quite sure what you want," said Dr. Marti Hearst, an
associate professor at the School of Information Management and Systems, who
led the research. "It's meant to help people find things, in part, by serendipity."
To create Flamenco, Dr. Hearst started with one archived collection of art at the
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which included 35,000 images that were
identified by written descriptions. She used the descriptions to classify the items in
a variety of ways, including the medium, the date, the artist and the content of the
image.
The categories were then cross-linked so that when people clicked on a category,
they immediately saw not only the images within it - say, of landscapes - but those
in related categories, like other artists working on landscapes at the same time in
the Netherlands.”
Flickr and Google developers also collaborated so the image tag field on Flickr
photostream pages can be used by the Google image search engine.
Flickr also provides the unique ability to develop an RSS feed based on a specific tag.
This enables interested readers to “subscribe” to information by content category rather
than a particular author, the more traditional RSS approach.
A built-in blog posting utility enables you to post photos to just about any other blog
(LiveJournal, Blogger, Moveable Type, Typepad, Manila, etc.) Flickr’s new Organizr
utility also provides the ability to group your images into different sets based on topic or
theme or some other common feature. Each “set” has a unique ID number that is
incorporated into its own unique URL. So, I can link to a particular set of images on any
other web page by calling the set URL.
I find combining Flickr and one of my Blogger accounts or subject-specific web pages
very convenient. For example, I maintain a Weblog entitled “Incredible Journeys” where
I describe interesting and educational places to visit. I select one of the most
representative images from the experience to post along with my narrative, then include a
link to the related Organizr set of images to supplement my text. The image is

4. automatically resized to a thumbnail by Flickr and aligned left to enable the narrative text
to wrap neatly around it. I include a link to the remaining images in the set and Flickr
resizes them as well and presents an image selection page where the viewer can see the
collection of thumbnails and choose those they wish to see in greater detail. Each image
includes a caption where I can further elaborate on the image contents.
A copyright setting utility enables you to state your copyright permissions, using
definitions established by Creative Commons, for each image. You can select a default
copyright setting to automatically set copyright for all uploaded images then modify
copyright permissions on an image by image basis. Creative Commons, an organization
founded in 2001, “is devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for
others to build upon and share.”
Too often the debate over creative control tends to the extremes. At one pole is a
vision of total control — a world in which every last use of a work is regulated
and in which "all rights reserved" (and then some) is the norm. At the other end is
a vision of anarchy — a world in which creators enjoy a wide range of freedom
but are left vulnerable to exploitation. Balance, compromise, and moderation —
once the driving forces of a copyright system that valued innovation and
protection equally — have become endangered species.
Creative Commons is working to revive them. We use private rights to create
public goods: creative works set free for certain uses. Like the free software and
open-source movements, our ends are cooperative and community-minded, but
our means are voluntary and libertarian. We work to offer creators a best-of-
both-worlds way to protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them —
to declare "some rights reserved." – "Some Rights Reserved": Building a Layer
of Reasonable Copyright.
I use the Attribution, Non-commercial, Share-alike license as my default. Although I
prohibit commercial use, I permit any non-commercial use as long as I am credited as the
original creator. I also allow non-commercial derivative works as long as the work is
also shared as non-commercial with appropriate attribution.
Flickr automatically resizes photos to produce a range of sizes suitable for different uses.
Since I selected the Medium original size suitable for screens 800X600 pixels in
resolution when I uploaded my images, visitors have the choice of the following sizes for
viewing or download:
(75 x 75) Square
(75 x 100) Thumbnail
(180 x 240) Small
(375 x 500) Medium
(450 x 600) Original

5. Most hosting sites also provide the ability for visitors to leave comments about images or
posts that they found particularly interesting. In addition to leaving simple text
comments, Flickr offers a note utility that enables a visitor to outline a portion of the
image and include information specific to that portion of the image. For example, if you
have an image with a group of people, you can outline each face and apply a name rather
than rely on the somewhat difficult to perceive left-to-right naming sequence in a caption.
The notes display can then be toggled on or off.
If you wish to be able to post images from a cameraphone, you will need a hosting
service that provides a unique e-mail address for your image collection as well. You will
also need to request picture messaging and e-mail service activation. Wireless companies
usually charge extra for these services.
Many of the features incorporated into products like Flickr attempt to address issues of
resource sharing and collaboration confronted by education in the development of
learning object repositories. Applying the same techniques defined in the specifications
developed for Sharable Courseware Object Reference Model (SCORM) objects, these
image management programs are using tags to describe the content in a variety of ways.
They capture information about the author, the copyright permissions, and the date the
information was made available. Integration of RSS technology provides an XML -based
distribution method, another specification of the Content Aggregation Model. With
further development of the grouping utilities to include attributes for educational purpose,
and references to additional sources, the platform could be ideal for managing and
distributing learning objects. Perhaps it is time to embrace these developing technologies
for educational purposes rather than continue to wait for the structural engineers to
wrangle out all of the fine points of data definition and dissemination.
"The SCORM spec is going to be successful almost by default, but unless all e-
learning specifications turn the focus from infrastructure to pedagogical
soundness, they are in danger of becoming instructionally irrelevant." So says
Thor Anderson, director of developer support at the Instructional Management
System Global Learning Consortium (IMS) in Burlington, Mass., and technical
editor of two major specifications that went into SCORM.” - SCORM: Clarity or
Calamity?
Eisenberg, Anne. "Making a Web Search Feel Like a Stroll in the Library." The New
York Times August 19 2004, sec. Circuits: online.
Brown, Glenn Otis. "Some Rights Reserved: Building a Layer of Reasonable Copyright".
San Francisco, CA, 2004. Website. Ed. Glenn Otis Brown. Creative Commons.
August 26 2004. <http://creativecommons.org/ >.
"How to Get the Most out of Flickr". Vancouver, B.C., 2004. Website. Ludicorp, Inc.
August 26 2004. <http://www.flickr.com/get_the_most.gne >.
Welsch, Edward. "Scorm: Clarity or Calamity?" 2004. Online journal. Online Learning
Magazine. August 26 2004.

6. <http://www.onlinelearningmag.com/onlinelearning/magazine/article_display.jsp
?vnu_content_id=1526769 >.