The internet is a jungle – vast, dense, and full of resources. This task challenged me to pick up my hypothetical machete and trek into it, learning how to find needed resources efficiently and then use them fairly.
On this particular trek, I delved into the virtual jungle to find pictures of the actual jungle – or at least pictures of Venezuela to get started on a presentation for a Spanish class I’m taking. I chose Flickr to search for photos, limiting my search to Creative Commons photos. I noticed how many high quality photos disappeared when I added this limiting term, but what could I complain since I could use the material free of charge (with reference and non-commercially)? I further noted that I could limit the search by size, orientation, date, and content, which could make the search process more efficient.
My archive tool of choice was Google Keep, which centers around “notes” that can include a mix of text, content, colors, and links. Once I found my photos of choice, I simply downloaded them, uploaded them to Google Keep and added a short description and photo credit. For fun, I tried using Bitly to shorten the link addresses to the Flickr photos, which was self-explanatory and simple. When all finished, I had a neat collection of photos, ready to use for content creation since I could easily include the image sources.
(My assortment of images and sources on Google Keep)
And that concludes my short foray into the jungle, learning about the mesas of Venezuela, and digital literacy and content curation at the same time.
Image: Tomorrow by Matsography – Link