.:Blended Edu:.: Learning Activity: Flickr & Yahoo! Audio Search

Have you thought about using Yahoo! Audio Search along with Flickr to link relevant audio files to pictures in your Flickr group page? Listening to content in its original context is also an effective situated learning tool that provides an avenue for students to actively participate in their own learning.

This activity provides both audio and visual elements, thereby appealing to the differing and multiple learning styles of students. Better yet, let your students combine elements from Yahoo! Audio Search and Flickr into a project-based learning activity.

For example, an American Studies teacher with a series of Mississippi River photos can post an audio link in a Flickr discussion thread to a dramatic reading from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.

Or a history teacher can start a discussion thread in a Flickr group about the Civil War, providing a link to Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in her pool of Gettysburg photographs. Instead of reading about Albert Einstein’s scientific contributions in a textbook, students can use Y! Audio Search to actually hear Einstein himself explain his Theory of Relativity.

Moreover, having students listen to period news reports about the fiery crash of the Hindenburg, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Robert F. Kennedy’s news conference announcing the assassination of Martin Luther King, or Eleanor Roosevelt’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights speech helps them make emotional connections to shared cultural experiences.

More importantly, as students incorporate different types of social media into their collaborative project-based learning activities, they develop the critical problem solving, web, knowledge management, and technology skills they will need to succeed in the 21st Century.

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