Last week half of Mrs. Hunter’s ELT class came to the library to work on iPad photography. Read about it here. Over the past 2 days, the other half of her class came for the same exploration. Once again, students chose their favorite photo to email to me for our blog gallery. Enjoy many of their Halloween inspired photos below and feel free to leave comments about their work.
Tag Archives: digital photography
iPad Photography
A group of 4th grade ELT students have been studying photography with their spectrum teacher, Mrs. Hunter. They have also been working in the library to learn about digital photography and tips for taking great photos. They collaborated on a Google doc to crowdsource a list of tips for taking digital photos, and they have explored many artistic ways to take photos around our school.
Over the past 2 days, these students have used our iPads to try even more ways of taking photographs. Students explored the following apps:
- Photobooth-Take a photo with many fun options.
- Camera!-Take a photo and apply many options to edit it.
- Pic Stitch-make collages and apply filters, stickers, and many other effects to each picture.
- Panorama-take a panoramic photo and apply filters to it.
- Pic Collage-Make a collage of photos from the camera roll, add text & stickers & backgrounds.
- Tap FX-Take a photo or use the camera roll and apply effects & filters
- PS Express-Use a picture from the camera roll and do basic to advanced photo editing.
The favorite by far was Tap FX because of the many explosions and fire effects you could add to a picture.
Once students tried several apps for taking photos and editing them, I asked them to select their favorite and email it to me. They used their school Google accounts to attach their picture. For many, email was still a new task, so this did slow us down a bit. I loved seeing their creativity in taking photographs but also in using apps to apply filters and effects to their pictures. I think their work has a lot of implications for future projects. These students could become consultants that teach others how to use the various photography apps for projects.
Take a look at their favorites in this gallery:
Photo Story Seasons: A 1st Grade Collaborative Project
Each student had a chair to put pictures in, a camera, and a cord for downloading
Over the past few weeks, students in 1st grade have been working on a seasons unit around their weather standards in science. This collaborative project involved the 1st grade teachers, the art teacher, and the media center. In class, students learned about weather in the various seasons, dressed paper dolls in appropriate clothing based on the seasons, and wrote sentences about each season. In art, students created background images on construction paper for each season.
In the media center, students came for 2 sessions to create photo story about their creations. They took digital photographs of their paper dolls in each season, imported their photographs onto the computer under their own accounts, and used photostory to record their scripts for each season.
The amount of technology that students used in the media center was a bit overwhelming, but they accomplished so much. To do this project, students had to figure out:
- how to turn on a digital camera and take a photograph that included all of the subject in the shot
- how to login to a computer with their own username and password, which included understanding how to use the mouse and keyboard
- open multiple programs on the computer and go through program wizards to complete the various tasks
- save pictures into their picture folder and delete photographs from a camera
- import pictures into photostory
- arrange pictures in the correct sequence to go along with the script
- use a usb microphone to record scripts for each photo in the photostory
- save and view their final piece
Once I actually listed out all of those skills (and I’m sure there are some that I missed), it really is amazing what we accomplished in 2 days. I won’t pretend that it was smooth and quiet, because it was very chaotic, messy, and loud. It took multiple adults supporting the students, but the students were eager, excited, and productive. I also won’t pretend that every student got their pictures in the right order or that they recorded the right script on the right picture. I CAN say that every student went through the process and learned something about using technology to create a digital product. They had permission to explore without endless instruction on what to click on and what to push on. Instead, they had some freedom to try things and had a lot of adult support individually.I think that as a result of this project, we’ll see many more uses of technology in our early grades, and we will continue to collaborate across multiple subject areas.
Joyce Sidman Poetry Study
An amazing opportunity came through my email a few weeks ago when Jennifer Graff, co-chair of the Children’s Literature Assembly Breakfast at NCTE, was looking for student poetry inspired by Joyce Sidman, the keynote speaker at the breakfast. I immediately agreed to work with students on a poet study because Joyce Sidman is one of the poets that most inspires me as a writer.
I sent out an email to teachers with possibilities for this study. Here were some options:
- Read Red Sings From the Treetops: A Year in Colors and write poems about colors in the various seasons
- Read Ubiquitous: Celebrating Nature’s Survivors and write poems and informational text about things in nature that have survived the test of time
- Read Dark Emperor & Other Poems of the Night and write poems and informational text about plants and animals of the night
- Read multiple books by Joyce Sidman and write poetry that was inspired by the elements of her poetry
Each one of these options could involve multiple forms of technology or be done with paper and pencil. So far, one teacher has completed a Joyce Sidman collaboration with me and another has signed up to begin in late April.
I collaborated with Ms. Olin, my former paraprofessional and now student teacher, to read multiple poems from Joyce Sidman’s books and talk about “noticings” from each of the poems. We looked at things like similes, repetition, rhythm, shape, form, word choice, and more. Students decided to write poems about nature since much of Sidman’s work is nature and science based. They took photographs of flowers, trees, and other nature around our school and also searched on Creative Commons for images. Students wrote poems at the media center tables and conferenced with me, Ms. Olin, Ms. Biehl, and their teacher, Mrs. Selleck. Finally, students used Photo Story to import their pictures, add text and music, and record their voices reading their poems.
These poems and others created in the coming weeks will be played at the Children’s Literature Assembly Breakfast at NCTE in Chicago. I’m so excited that our students’ work will have this authentic audience to appreciate their creative endeavors. You can get a sneak peek at some of the poems by clicking these links.
Expect the Miraculous 