I completed the 3-week digital photo “boot camp” and have to say it was a curate’s egg. The first class focused on hooking the camera up and transferring photos. That one went over well and I think the students were very pleased with it. Everyone brought their cameras and transferred a photo to My Pictures. It turned into pretty much an entire class of Q&A but that seemed to work well. The second class was all about Flickr and I think it was a total disaster. None of the 2.0-esque community aspects of Flickr seemed to grab anyone, and no one seemed quite sure why I thought it was a good idea to use Flickr for photo sharing. The third week involved 90 minutes of having fun with the sample pictures in Picnki — now that was a hit. I’m not sure how many of the students will open their own accounts, but if nothing else, they’re more aware now of what kinds of tools are out there and how easy they are to use.
The class is definitely worth repeating, but I might remove Flickr and make it two weeks long. Or try to explore ways of making Flickr more appealing.
