The real innovation in the current interactive, easy-to-use Web applications is in their availability to students (and faculty) for creating, without much training, and often without any expense, work products. Published products can be shared with instructor, other students, family, later educators, etc., and they can be edited and improved upon as knowledge, or student expertise, develops.
Perhaps the most powerful example of both the current state of the Web and the power of students to use it creatively is from one of Michael Wesch's digital ethnography classes,
"A Vision of Students Today:"
In one example, a Canadian high-school teacher gave his students an assignment to find math in the world around them and document it in photographs. Here's the assignment, along with the rubric used to evaluate it, and here are the pictures on Flickr, the major social-networking photo site.
From the University of Manitoba's Learning Technology Center, here's a whole boat load of ways just to use Flickr in teaching. Can you think how you might use it? Can you think of other tools to do these things?
How can Flickr be used within your course or discipline?
A book has been published about flickr possibilities. It's called flickr mashups.
Alan Levine has argued that flickr can be the ultimate tool to introduce all the facets of Web 2.0-ish concepts. I've presented on this a number of times; you may find some examples you seek at What Can We Do With flickr? done last October for the K12 Online Conference. Also a good list of other resources on this page.
Share photos within a Class, School, Department, Faculty, College or University.
Set up a group for your courses - share photos with group members
Architecture/visual arts groups can use the geo-tag feature to share images/locations, etc.
An example of a designer using flickr to collect great web page designs:Web Design Inspiration
Work with international students - i.e. stimulate discussions on countries of origin
World issues - a map for students - i.e. making it seem like more than a map by using photos and linking to real-life images
Traveling - flickr your journey - share with family, classmates
Use for building community in distance education - i.e. students share images of themselves, where they live, etc. "introduce yourself in flickr" - where you live, work, etc.
Use in Telemedicine for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes.
Use in Anatomical Pathology for diagnostic consultations.
Most underused is the ability to create hyperlinked diagrams with the notes tool -- see examples
There are some interesting ideas for doing visual stories via imagery -- Storytelling in Flickr and --teaching files Xrays.
And flickr groups provides a place to share images and have a built in discussion tool- see the one for - Flickr in Education
Great YouTube video The Machine is Us/ing Us