Flickr Photo History Assignment

I am creating a new assignment this semester. It is a sort of annotated bibliography but done with photos. My students must find photos of historical interest (really, it could be almost anything)....cemeteries, architecture, family immigration photos, even scanned images from newspapers, books, etc. They then have to talk about each photo and place each in an historical context using scholarly texts (JSTOR articles and books from the library). They must "annotate" each photo with its historical context using a minimum of 200 words. They must also use proper citation style. They will load 10 photos to a flickr group that I have established. I will then grade each student's 10 photos. I am grading on historical context, artistry, and technical aspects (tags, geotags, etc). Each student will also be allowed to post their single best photo in a second top 20 group. The best 20 photographs will get 20 extra credit points.

This will take some time to grade I'm afraid. But it will be interesting grading. I think the students will like it, but I have no idea if they actually will. The idea of this project is to make history relevant to each individual student by getting them to place their personal and family photos into historical context through scholarly research. I am trying to come up with an assignment that would require them to start a blog but I don't know if that would be as interesting. For the photo history group, I am very interested to see how it turns out. Details to follow later this semester.