Happy Birthday, Gretchen!

I'm sure you noticed the new photo gallery on the right side of this blog. I'm sure you are dying to know how I did that. There has to be a classroom application for this somewhere!
First, the pictures are of my daughter opening a birthday gift and she graciously said I could use the photos in an effort to promote technology use at Fremd. Thanks, Gretchen!

Ever the geek, I decided to take some of the pictures using my cell phone camera and thought I would use this opportunity to share how I got them from my cell phone to my Tablet PC. I don't have a cell phone data transfer cable that I can use to directly download photos to my Tablet, so I had to rely on wireless means.

The Flickr Approach

I have a Flickr account that I use mainly as a resource for getting pictures I might need for a quick presentation and also for quick uploads of pictures if I know I or someone else will need to access them from another computer later. Flickr offers me the additional ability to email photos to my account which makes it useful for me to send photos from my phone to the email address Flickr provides.

Basics

1. Create your account
2. Click on your username at the top of the screen next to where it says, "Signed in as [username]." This takes you to Your Account.
3. Click on the Email link next to the Personal Information section. Your unique Flickr email is listed next to where it says Your Flickr Upload Email.
4. Now, open your photo gallery (or what ever it may be called in your phone) and send the photos using that email address.

Now, I'm not about to attempt to tell you how to use your own phone to send pictures, as there are so many different phones and possibilities for doing this! Stop by to see me, though, and I'll help you figure out how it's done.
Next, I used Flickr to create a 'photo badge' that would generate some html code that I could easily copy and paste into the new HTML widget provided by Blogger. The result is the small gallery of photos you see to the right. There a few other steps involved, like creating a 'Set' of pictures in Flickr for the gallery. It took a little time, and patience.

I also learned that I could send pictures directly to this blog but have had a little trouble doing that. More later, when I figure it out. Or, maybe someone could help me with that part!

The only downside to sending photos from my phone to Flickr is that my phone has a 600 KB limit on file size sending, so, I could not send the 1.3 MB movies I had also taken. Now what?

The Bluetooth Approach

My Tablet PC has Bluetooth technology and so does my cell phone. They can talk to one another like a mini wireless network. I could do this in a forest with no access to any kind of wireless network needed. I had no trouble sending my cell phone movies to my computer. Bluetooth is cool.

Basically, the general process for using Bluetooth wireless technology is as follows:

1. Make sure your cell phone is 'discoverable' by other Bluetooth devices such as your Tablet PC.
2. Right-click on the Bluetooth icon in the lower right corner of your screen and Add a Bluetooth Device.
3. Click Next from the window that opened and let the computer discover all of the devices in my immediate area that had Bluetooth technology installed and turned on. This is a slick way to search for cell phones in your classroom, by the way!
4. Use your cell phone to search for new devices.
5. "Pair" them, if needed, so that they can talk to one another.

These instructions are purposely vague because each cell phone will have a slightly different way of finding and connecting to another Bluetooth device. Again, stop by and I will be more than happy to help you learn you how this is done on your phone.

So, how could either of these techniques be used in the classroom or school environment? Further, Flickr badges are just HTML code and could be used in your class, activity, or athletic website or blog. What do you think? Pros, Cons?