It's the day after Thanksgiving here in the US — usually called "Black Friday", but which I've heard better described as "Sleep Off The Turkey Day" — and it seems as good a day as any other to get back in the blogging saddle.
I was looking over the New York Times' coverage of the Thanksgiving Day Macy's parade, and noticed that their slide show, while competently shot, was, well, somewhat lacking in the narration and emotion departments. I decided to try an experiment: what would happen if I ran a Flickr search for photos of the parade?
The results were astounding — not only were many photos far more interesting and compelling than the Times' slide show, many were better composed and executed in formal terms as well. Compare this photo to the Times' photo of Garfield — which do you think does a better job of telling a story?
What's more, the Flickr search will only get better as time goes by — more people will post their photos of the parade, and more people will comment on them, pushing the interesting/unusual/powerful ones to the top of the stack.
Now, I am not suggesting that the Times should get rid of their photographers, nor that the quality of their work is subpar — but I am suggesting that something very interesting happens when a community (and Flickr is most definitely a community) shares its creative work in an open social space. And since this blog focuses on education, I would like to gently urge educators to overcome some long-held prejudices about work that takes place in informal spaces, and think about how these mechanisms can be harnessed for learning.
Posted by Ruben at November 24, 2006 8:25 PM