Our school uses Google Apps for Education. We require our teachers to have either a class Blogger blog or a class Google Site. Teachers are expected to post photos and weekly updates.
Each teacher has their own school Google Apps account which they use for school work and school correspondence. They also have a class account. Students are given the credentials for that account. Those same credentials are used for the class YouTube account and other class accounts such a SoundCloud.
Our teachers have Google + enabled. Our students and class accounts do not have it enabled. We ran into a problem when teacher would upload class photos to their personal account. Those photos would end up on Google +. If they set the privacy to unlisted, then they had to link every photo upload individually to their class site. If they set it to public, the photos were searchable and families were unhappy.
For now, the easiest solution is to only upload photos to the class account. Those photos go to Picasaweb, not to Google +. From there, it is easy to embed a slideshow or share the link. Unfortunately, since Google would like Picasaweb to go go away, they seem to have stopped development on it. As a result, it is a very clunky tool with no batch processing.
I decided to see what the process could look like in Flickr instead. I assumed the teacher had created a class account in Flickr. They could then follow the directions below. The photos end up public but they are not visible to search engines. That means only people with the link are likely to find them. By using Flickr’s collections feature, all the class albums can be in one collection. By sharing the link to the collection, families can visit throughout the year and see each of the albums.
Listed below is the best workflow I was able to devise. Click here to see an easier to print version.
Flickr Album Settings for Class Accounts
Flickr allows granular control of photos. For examle, I can set an album to Public but not visible to search engines. That should allow families to easily view the photos without them being easy for other people to find them.
Create a class collection.
In your class Flickr account, click the Albums and Collections tab. Then click new collection.
Give the collection a title.
Get the link to the class collection.
Click on the collection’s title, then select Open collection page.
Copy the URL from the top of the page. That will be the link to your class photos. Add it to your class blog or website.
Upload photos from iPhoto to Flickr.
In iPhoto, select the photos you want to share. Click Share in the bottom right corner. Then click on Flickr. If this is your first time sharing to Flickr, follow the on-screen directions to link your class Flickr account to your iPhoto.
Click New Set.
Give the set a name. Make photos viewable by anyone. (We will make them unsearchable later.)
Change the set’s settings.
In a web browser, login to your class Flickr account. Click on the Albums tab and then click on your new set. From now on we will refer to that set as an album.
When you are in the album, click the Edit tab.
Now we will make some changes using the Batch edit.
Batch edit > Change permissions
Set to Anyone (Public).
Change license to “None (All rights reserved).” That prevents other people from downloading, (but not screen capturing) the photos.
Set “Hide/show in public searches” to “Hide these items from public searches.
Add album to your class collection.
Click on the Albums & Collections tab.
Tap the triangle next to your class collection. Drag the album on top of the collection.
Click back on the name of the collection. Click the arrow to the right of the collection. Select “Open collection page.”
You should now see your new album in your class collection. Families who visit your class photo gallery should be able to see it, but people searching the internet with a search engine such as Google or Yahoo or Bing can’t find it.
For future uploads…
After this first upload, teachers start at the iPhoto step for subsequent photo uploads.