Digital Imagery in the Classroom

Digital imagery is an easy and important way to incorporate many different learning styles in the classroom. The advantages of using the digital camera include being able to see and edit the photos immediately, share an infinite amount of copies with students and being able to incorporate more of the students perspectives on topics into the class. All of these reasons (and more) allow for the easy application and inclusion of digital imagery into the everyday classroom.

In my grade seven science class, I am going to incorporate a greater use of digital imagery in a variety of ways. My first project for the students will involve using visual examples of items on our terminology list. Our school year is divided into three terms and I have the students keep a running terminology list for each term. Currently in term three, we are discussing structures, products, stability and forces. I am fortunate enough to be in a school environment where technology is on the forefront of a lot of discussions and fundraising. As well, being at a private school, the students themselves mostly have access to their own digital cameras. My first new incorporation of digital imagery in the classroom would involve the students taking digital pictures to correspond to words we discuss and incorporate onto their terminology list. Concepts such as solid, frame and shell structures could better be understood with the pictures of the items as opposed to just the word listed as n example. The students could be required to find and create images that fit into these categories. This would not only help them to remember the words, but also reinforce a real life application of the concepts discussed.

Many of the students also create flash cards when studying these terminology words, and another use would be to create flash cards with corresponding photos to replace the whole idea of a list in the students notebook. It could be an ongoing project to be added to throughout the term, and it would be really helpful come test time. Another spin off of this use would be for me to replace the traditional pen to paper quiz, and I could show images instead of stating the terminology word and the students would have to use the photos to describe and define the related concepts.

In math, you could actually incorporate the same idea of relating terms and new ideas to digital images. In math, you could actually show the math in society and allow the students to make a meaningful connection between the concepts and their applications. We actually already do a “math quest” in our class. In the past, this has involved creating a series of questions and problems that the students actually physically go out onto the school campus and answer the problems. One example would be calculating the shortest distance from the front door of the school to a specific bus. Because the bus and the school doors create a right angle, the shortest distance is the hypotenuse, and they can calculate this using Pythagorean Theorem. One way to incorporate digital imagery would be to have the students take pictures of themselves at each station working out the answers by measuring and calculating. In the past, I have set up some kind of tag or marker to show that they have been to each station. This way, I can easily see the group working together to solve the problem. I would also like to challenge the students by having them create a problem of their own that they could solve (or have another student solve). The students could create the problem, and take a picture of the site so other teams could go to the site and solve the problem that was created.

Terminology could also be clarified in a similar manner to my ideas for science. In math, I would take pictures in the real world that show or enforce some of our concepts. One of the first examples I thought of would be the concept of unit rates or values. We calculate how to determine the price of 1gram of an item when we start with a price for a whole package. Sometimes, the students don’t see the value or use of this concept, but I could take pictures at the grocery store of a number of different things to reinforce this concept. I could take pictures of many different products with their price tags, and have the students calculate what products are better values. They could select or take a copy of the products that are the best deals, and compare their chosen products to a final key.

Finally, in science, the students could incorporate some original digital imagery into oral presentations that they create. These presentations are created by the students on a scientific career that they are interested in, and part of the requirements involve the students creating a Powerpoint presentation. I find that many students interview professionals in the related fields, and I would love for the students to take digital pictures of these encounters and of the types of places the people work in or some of the equipment that they use. I think this could really enhance the impact that the projects have on the other students in the class.

Overall, digital imagery and the use of using them in the classroom are endless, and I look forward to incorporating them into my classroom.