Students With Cameras

One day when I was sitting through student presentations where the students were showing photographs of themselves taken by their parents and themselves, I kept thinking that students can take better photos than these (so could parents for that matter). So starting in the third grade I began teaching the basics of digital photography.

I did this mostly for selfish reasons; I did not want to sit through another presentation filled with bad photos. You know the ones...

- out of focus
- bad lighting
- bad layout
- bad anything else

It was like I blogged weeks ago about students and school technology; "Just because a student owns technology, it does not mean that they know how to properly use it." Besides, it gave me a chance to teach the 21st Century Skill of creativity.

So I sat my students down and taught them how to take proper photos, passed out the cameras and instructed them to stay in my computer lab and practice what they had just learned. We then went through their photos, instructed them how to improve and then tried it again and again until they got it right. Just like a teacher would do with a new math concept, but in this case a tech concept.

Here is what I got from 4th and 5th grade students...



Surprised?

Remember, students can do incredible things if we just ask them to and hold them to a standard of quality that has been expected in their other subjects like reading, writing and math. If we don't allow students to write poorly then why do we allow them to use school technology poorly?