Digital Images in the Classroom

Here are some activities mentioned in my paper on Digital Images in the Classroom:

There are countless opportunities throughout the curriculum to use digital photography. Here are just three examples that I have used in the last year. In the Language curriculum it is important for students to be aware of point-of-view and voice in pieces of literature. One activity to bring this concept home is to re-write a well-known story from a different character’s perspective. Fairy tales are wonderful to use because they are so well known and usually have a villain or sidekick through which the modified story can be told. In addition to re-writing the story in groups, they also had to create a picture book. Instead of drawing the images, they were to act them out using tableau, which is a frozen picture or snapshot of action. One student took the photos with a digital camera while the group posed in their tableau. Once the pictures were taken, the students typed out the book and included one image on each page. The image had to go along with the text that was included on that page just like an actual picture book. The kids brought in costumes and had a ball. Drama and language expectations were covered as well as allowing the kids the opportunity to edit and format the pictures on the computer.

Another language-based activity is creating a magazine. The class discussed the various forms of media we see around us every day and how they communicate with us. We talked about how magazines communicate with both text and images. The students then had to create their own magazine with expository, persuasive and descriptive articles. They also had to include advertisements in their magazine for various products. While some students chose to hand draw their images and others cut pictures out of actual magazines, the majority used digital images they found online. These images lent a feel of legitimacy to their magazine as if it were a professionally published periodical. The pictures they used were easily sized and imported into their documents. Many wrote about celebrities and then used actual photos of them in their articles. The digital images they found on the web worked well because they were specific to the themes of the students work and they look professional because digital imagery is so easy to manipulate and make your own. A few students chose to take the photos themselves and include their family and friends in their articles and advertisements. This creative and personal touch certainly makes a great impression on the reader. Their magazines will no doubt make wonderful mementos of their year in our class.

To extend digital photography into the math class is arguably even simpler. A neat lesson that I have used in the past basically uses images as conversation starters in math. This technique can be used as an intro or a wrap-up to a math concept. An image of a Ferris wheel perhaps might spark a student to think of tessellations or rotations. An image of a pizza might get a student thinking about fractions. The next step in this activity is to send the students out with a camera to capture images that have a math spin on them. The concept doesn’t really matter. It could be decimals, geometric shapes, symmetry, ratios or whatever unit of study is happening in your class. The kids bring the images back and we would discuss them as a class or try to guess what each student was thinking about when they took their picture. I have found that kids love to talk about math and numbers and this is a great way to start the conversation. While finding digital images on-line is a great place to start, the real learning starts when the kids take control of the camera and the images.