What is Flickr?
Flickr is a photo sharing website which has become an online community and an important imagebank/repository. Flickr lets you upload photos, create photo albums, share them with other users, and post comments.
Flickr began as a website for sharing personal photos, but it is now widely used by bloggers as a photo repository. Its utility as an vast imagebank has much to do with its tools for tagging and browsing photos using "folksonomy." Like Ecto, Flickr is considered "Web 2.0" or "social software" because it supports group interaction. Like YouTube (and Ecto), you can embed Flickr in web pages outside of the site itself...for instance, in Ecto!
How can I use Flickr in Ecto?
There are many possible uses! One of the most basic uses is to create essay questions and multchoice questions in Ecto that incorporate images from Flickr. Or, say, you wanted to build a deck of multimedia foreign language flashcards in Ecto. You could find images for the flashcards on Flickr.
A more sophisticated use might be to have your students create Flickr photo albums as a class project--say photos from a field trip--and then share the photo albums in Ecto, where you, as the instructor, could easily evaluate them and offer feedback.