Online communities are transforming the world in countless ways. Here’s another community, and it offers considerable potential as a reference resource, as a constructive outlet for creative effort, and as an authentic learning activity.  The site may be especially helpful for learners who need information presented visually.

fotopedia defines itself as a ‘collaborative photo encyclolpedia’.  At present, there are 44, 764 articles illustrated by 661, 750 photos.  Registration is free, and any registered member can create articles and/or nominate photos to illustrate articles.  Additional information is from Wikipedia and Google Maps.

The quality of images on fotopedia is excellent.  That’s because you can only nominate photos to illustrate articles.  An image must receive 5 votes of affirmation before being fully accepted for the article.  Photos can be uploaded from your computer, or imported directly from Flickr.

A desktop client (Mac and PC) is available to download so you can have fotopedia available on your computer’s desktop. You can also use a customizable widget to  embed slide-shows of fotopedia images.  I’ve illustrated this below with a slidewhow of the images that accompany the article on India.