being EDU™

Why a Photo Gallery?

Time after time in audience surveys, focus groups, and marketing surveys, one of the top requests from visitors to school websites is the desire to see "real life" at the school. Whether the visitor is a potential student, current parent, a parent of a prospective student, alumni and alumnae, faculty colleagues, potential new faculty, or a member of the school's local, national or international audience, people want to see images of other people — a natural human instinct. At Ideacodes, we've been proponents of immersive media (embedded video) for an even more realistic view into life and learning at schools, but frequent, updated photos are a great start and often more immediate, accessible and casual.

Why use Flickr?

It's fun! If Google is the epitome of the functional, fast, and most effective search, I would have to say Flickr is its photo-managing-and-sharing equivalent. The suite of tools is seamless and the user experience is highly intuitive. As you start to explore what Flickr has to offer you're constantly surprised by its integration and offerings -- post photos through email to your Flickr site, easily flag content as private, public and to what degree (friends, family, everyone), organize your photos using a dynamic flash app, invite your friends, join any number of Flickr groups, tag your content, explore others tags and photos and see who else is thinking like you are. That's just the mere tip of the iceberg, too.

Flickr is also a glimpse into the next wave of what's possible with web applications. Brewing under the surface of Flickr is an underlying technology that is just beginning to buzz in web design, developer, social software, and even investment circles. This is a whole other story that we'll be posting about shortly. Suffice it to say that among others, Yahoo, Ester Dyson, and Joi Ito have all invested in Flickr.

What Can My School do with Flickr?

Here are some ideas if you're a school, college, or university:

• Put up a new photo tour of the school (and allow others to add their own photos of campus)
• Showcase photos from Admissions events
• Make a school moblog and have students moblog their cell phone photos
• Create a student portrait gallery with quotes or better yet, personal anecdotes about life at school
• Create albums of Alumni class reunions
• Post ongoing photos of the new Science building construction for donors and alumni to see
• Make a Commencement album to show ceremony photos (and to encourage graduates or parents to submit their own photos)
• Add a photo section to your student publication and use Flickr for the gallery

Try it out at flickr.com or contact us and we'll help you. Visit the ideacodes flickr site or see our flickr stream on the Ideacodes studio page.

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