Photography in the classroom

Photography in the classroom















What is your tool?
Photography


How can it be used?
Photography can be used in the classroom in a variety of ways.

• Taking pictures of different stages in a science experiment such as life stages of a butterfly, frog, and plants.
• Exploring the community and taking pictures of different places to learn about the community and community helpers such as firemen, police officers, doctors, teachers, etc.
• For younger students you can assign them a letter and then have them explore the classroom or school and look for objects that begin with that letter.
• Capture pictures on field trips and then use those pictures to create slide shows, powerpoints, or videos to share with the class.
• Create displays for bulletin boards
• Use pictures to create holiday gifts/cards for parents.
• Take pictures thoughout the school year during parties and activities and then share them with parents.

Photography in the classroom is immediate, versatile, colorful, interactive and engages the attention of todays students. Photography stimulates and motivates both the teacher and the students.

Advantages

• Engages students in the technology of digital cameras and allows them to explore photography as it enhances their learning.
• Creates hands on lessons/activites.
• It's a new and exciting way for students to learn.
• Pictures are immediately available.
• Pictures can be saved in graphic format.
• Pictures are easily transmitted from the camera to the computer.
• They can be viewed on a screen, smartboard, and can be put into powerpoints and videos.

Disadvantages

• There is always a risk of problems to occur when using technology so teachers need to create alternative lessons for back up plans.
• Teachers and students can become fustrated when they are unsure how to use digital cameras to create photographs.
• Charging or buying batteries could become expensive.
• There would have to be a class set of cameras so each student is able to interact or there could be partners and they could take turns. All students might not be participating at the same time.
• Damages to the camera.

Audience

Photography can be used by any age. Students and teachers can both take part in the process of photography to enhance the students learning.

Learn more about this tool at the below websites:

1001 Uses for a digital camera

Teacher to teacher: Ideas from around the world

Digital photography for the k-5 classroom

My Opinion on Photography

I LOVE PHOTOGRAPHY! I think photography is a great way to capture pictures and share with others. There are a variety of different cameras and I enjoy the DSLR cameras but they are way to advanced for classrooms. In my future classroom I would like to use basic digital cameras that would help my students in the learning process. Photography would be a good tool when working with science because students can take pictures daily/weekly/monthly of the life cycles of butterflys, frogs, and plants. Its a good way for students to explore hands on. In older classrooms they could learn how to upload pictures, create slide shows and edit pictures.

By: Ashley Chapman

Wikispaces ID: http://achapman.wikispaces.com/