Digital Cameras in the Classroom
Posted by Debra Liverman on 06 Jan 2009 | Posted in: Classroom Management, Preschool, The Mailbox
I’m sure there were plenty of new digital cameras given as presents this holiday season! Maybe you were the lucky recipient of one. I love my digital camera. It is so easy to use and offers that immediate gratification of knowing how my photo turned out. When I was growing up, my mom was an amateur photographer and used to develop her own black-and-white film. She had a darkroom in the basement with all the necessary equipment. I remember watching her through the entire lengthy process. Of course, the most exciting part was agitating the paper in the chemicals, waiting for the image to magically appear. And to think that now I can see the image in seconds!
I bet I could find digital cameras being used in classrooms all over the country. Kim Murphy, the managing editor of The Mailbox Preschool, featured a unit on using digital cameras in the classroom in the December/January issue. Here are a few of the ideas that she selected to feature from her subscribers.
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Greeting Card Fun Print classroom photographs onto plain paper as shown. Then fold the papers to create cards and place them at your writing center. Invite students to go to the center and add writing and decorations to one or two of the cards to take home to family members. No doubt family members will enjoy seeing current photos of classroom activities. –Mary, Keokuk, IA |
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Photo Die Cover a cube-shaped box with decorative Con-Tact paper. Then attach the hook side of a Velcro fastener to each side of the box. Cut out and laminate a head-shot photograph of each child. Attach the loop side of a Velcro fastener to each photo. Then attach a photo to each side of the cube to make a die. Roll the die to choose a child for a specific activity. Then replace the chosen child’s photo with a different photo. –Diane, Hayes, VA |
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Being a home child care provider I usually care for children for a few years before they head to school. I use my digital camera for many things but the biggest would be to make a scrapbook for each child for the time they have been in my care. For most children they come to me at 3 months old and leave when they start kindergarten. So you can imagine the joy I have of putting books together of our time together.
I agree with the lady that said “a picture is worth 1,000 words”. I use my digital camera to take the childrens picture to document information for my annecdotals, which I use for my DRDP-R’s (developmental record). One picture can give me at least 4 different areas of developmental progress. And thanks to Cindy, I will use your idea on the large photo cutouts of faces.
I also use my digital camara for all of our activities,Craft projects throughout the year. Last year the kids saved a few projects each month and made a pocket memory book at the end of the year to take home. I also made scrapbook pages with the photos and saved them as a pdf file and burned them to cd for the parents to print out to keep at home.
This was a big hit! a couple of years ago I made a musical slide show for a christmas gift . the kids drew their friends in pencil and I outlined them in sharpie and scanned them in to personalize the cover of their DVD. You can also take pics of their artwork to print out for gifts. this year we are making a calendar each month. It will have pics of daily activities and seasonal artwork! the ideas are ENDLESS!!!
I use digital cameras to videotape certain kids during the day. At conferences, I show the parents videos of each child.
I use my digital camera for taking pictures throughout the whole year. Guests speakers, center activities, lost teeth, star work, celebrations, you name it, I snap it! I make a slideshow presentation at the end of the year and copy it onto DVD’s for the parents to keep. I also add the pics to my slideshow sceensaver on our class computers. The kids love seeing new pics every couple of weeks!
I have been using digital cameras with students as writing activities. What better way to develop sentences by writing about pictures taken of them during the course of the school day. At end of month, I give pictures to the students. Sometimes I even scrapbook one or two of them.
I use my digital camera all the time and my new digital video camera.
I teach middle school so, I have 96 kids throughout the day. If we do anything special outside of the classroom, field trips, guest speakers, etc…I always take pictures and then post them on the bulletin board. As track coach, I assign someone to take pictures and meets and then post these outside the office - I always have a slew of kids who want to be on the track team!
My digital camera, I use when we do skits in class. Then, I put the videos on cd and share the work with the whole team. That way, each kids not only gets to see their own class videos, but those of the other students as well. They always love this. It also gives the kids an authentic audience because they know their performance isn’t only for their own class.
I use a digital camera all the time in my classroom for years. My kids love the photographs. Seeing themselves is very great. I take the one photo and put on the frame, then put on the home center. Every two weeks I change the photo. When finally the year is over I take the photos and present photo montage in a slide show in the final activity. The parents like when they see her/his son’s in different activities during all year.
I use digital photos all year long. At the end of the year, I set them to music and present the slide show to students as a year end gift so that they can remember all the things we did in preschool. Parents and children love seeing them and what they do!
My students love the digital camera. We use the program “Photo Story” to make a story out of our projects. The children have gotten handy at adding captions and making their projects look professional. It also works wonders for lessons like how our community has changed over time. I went around town taking old and new business pictures and the children had to compare how things had changed in the last few years.
Hi,
I want to share with you what I have been doing for my parents and students.
I have a blog that gives invitations to only my parents to view.
I weekly add to my blog with pictures, videos, scrapbooks and details of what we did during the week. I also add music in the background to various slideshows.
This has been a HIT! My parents and students look forward to the up-dates.
Parents appreciate it because they are able to see first hand what their children are doing in the classroom.
I also have childrens songs on my blog.
The newsletter is put on the blog as well as important information.
There is so much you can do with the digital camera and the computer now a days that can bless the lives of many.
It is sooo FUN!
Oops! I also use the movie function of the camera to get the news telling and other activities for my records.
I have used digital cameras in my room for ten years or so now and it is a very important part of my record keeping.
A picture is worth 10,000 words! Handedness, pencil grip, pattern making - just to name a few. Most important though is the ability to get a copy of the first time they do news and to take several more throughout the year which provides a great record of language development as well as growing confidence; interactions with other children; participation in mat activities….list is endless.
Great to use in a parent-teacher conference when trying to get a point across.
I have also just purchased a digital photo frame to set up in the room so that the kids can see the photos we have taken each day as well as a selected range that I have chosen to put onto it. Will free up computers and will also be good on parent nights etc.
Sm:)es.
I LOVE my digital camera! I assign one child each day to be the “Photo Journalist” of the day. Their job is to take photos of projects or things that happen through out the day. They have to choose their photos carefully because they can only take 5 pictures. The children are becoming excellent photographers! I take time each day to speak with the journalist about their pictures and we decide if all the pictures should be printed or which pictures are “good” pictures. The children have come up with a list of what makes a good picture.
So my kids are learning not only how to take digital pictures, but what makes a good picture and how to care for the camera.
I also use the photos for a yearbook at the end of the school year.
Each child gets a yearbook with all the photos.
I also use photos of the children with their paintings and then load the photos onto my computer and put the photos into i-movie and make it into a theme based movie! We did an Ocean alphabet with each child painting an ocean creature. I took the pictures and the children added their voices to the movie stating a fact about the animal they painted. It was so cool! And fun! Then I burned a CD for each child! They loved having their own movie!
I use my digital camera nearly everyday. I teach older 3’s, younger 4’s and they love “seeing” themselves. I took pictures of childen in each center and made and 8×10 copy, put it in a plastic sleeve and posted it in that particular center. I also took pics of the things that belonged in the plastic tubs, taped to the end of the tub and it’s much easier for the children to clean up and get things back in their proper place. At Christmas, I blew the faces up, cut them out, and pasted onto 3′ tall gingerbread kids made out of tan paper that the children had decorated. They looked so cute in the hall and the parents loved them! At the end of the year I copy all of the photos to a CD and give one to each child for their memory book. Photos that I printed off are also given to each individual child. I don’t know what I would do w/o my camera.
Pictures are great to have at a ‘Where Am I’ board and at the Learning Stations Management board. One of our teachers made student ids (like driver’s licenses). They are great for field trips! ..Of course, making a class year book and powerpoint for the end of the year is always fun.
We use digital cameras to put children’s faces on the projects we find in the Mailbox. The elves were adorable with each child’s face!
One of the jobs in our classroom (4-5 yr. olds) was “Reporter”. The reporter used the digital camera to take a picture of one of the activities that he/she participated in that day. The child then dictated a short narrative about that activity to myself or my co-teacher. We wrote it down for them and they signed their name. We then, posted the report on the class bulletin board. It was the most popular, awaited job among the students and the parents loved checking out the report. We generally left the reports up on the BB for up to a month and then we put the reports in the childrens portfolios that were given to parents at the end of the year.
We use digital cameras to take photos of special things we do throughout the year. We put them into a power point to show at open house, and at the end of the year, we record the power point from the computer onto a video tape. Copies are made for each student; then they have a “videobook” of their special school year.
I take pictures of the kids doing activities during the day. At nap time, I send parents pictures of their kids during the day. At the end of the month my partner and I select pictures and label them with objectives to make a poster for our hallway. The parents can see how playing is learning. The kids see them selves and discuss what they were doing. The pictures that are not on the poster are displayed around the room and at the end of each month we make a book for the kids
We have a letter writing center in our classroom-grades 1-4. I will be adding stationery with our kids in action for letters to grandparents, etc. Our students love writing letters so this will a new topic. Another good use for my new camera.
There are many ways to use photos for preschool.We use photos for sequencing a project( put dirt in the zip-loc bag, add water, add seeds, stages of growth, etc), and we use it to show how we made a cooking project. We also use photos of activities done for the month, so that each child has a scrapbook type page to decorate for each month. When we go on an excursion, we put the photos in a mini album ( the kind that a 4 by 6 photo fits in) and then we put the album on the book display for children and parents to look at.The children enjoy talking about the photos, which helps their language skills.
This year, we’ve used individual digital photos of the children in our program
to label laminated apple labels on their coat hooks and mailboxes, to make Christmas ornament picture frames, (using wooden sticks), for class directory books for each family to introduce the children, and on laminated labels that we use once a month on large wall graphs, (”my favorite season, my favorite color, what I like to do in the snow”, etc.) The children just stick their picture up under the heading for their “vote” and then we can clearly see which choices had the most/least or no votes. I also post photos regularly on a web page that the parents can access to see what we’ve been doing each day in class. That way, I save money on printing and each family can choose to print or scrapbook or email to grandparents, any pictures they like. At the end of the year, we plan to use digital pictures to make memory books for each child to keep, based on the alphabet, (”Letter F is for flag. In school, we sing the flag song.”)
I enjoy a using digital camera in my classroom. I put the pictures into social stories and individualize books for students to read.
For example (Kathy sees a horse) Above Kathy’s name would be a picture of Kath, about horse would be a picture of a horse. Students really love to see their pictures in sentences and stories. Eventually, students learn their names and other words and will not need the pictures to assist in recognizing the written words.
Danielle Palmer found that the children left the camera on and the batteries often ran out. Replacing the batteries has become expensive for her. We use digital camera rechargeable batteries. You can get a charger and batteries for less than $15.00. I can charge four batteries at a time. When one pair of batteries run out, I have another pair of batteries that are charged and ready to go. The batteries can be charged overnight and are ready for the next day.
I have used digital cameras many times in many ways.
One of the main ways I have used them is to take head shots of the children, blow up the photos to about 8 1/2 x 11, print and cut out the faces. The faces become parts of an art project such as the face of a scarecrow. They are adorable!
There are so many fun things you can do with digital cameras in the classroom! I recently received a grant for a digital camera in which the students used the camera to take pictures of things in the classroom to make individual student picture dictionaries that they got to take home at the end of the year. I made the journals from half-sheets of paper and bound them, one page per letter. They had to find the letter it started with and copy the word in their journals, which could be used at writing time. The pictures were printed at the size of 1/4 of a 4×6 to save money. After a short lesson on how to handle and use a camera, they loved being able to take their own pictures and then see them print!
I also use the camera to label things in the room and for EC students that need picture schedules or cues. Last year I made a picture roster for substitutes and I kept it in my substitute folder, a 3-ring binder with all the important stuff. Besides crafts/gifts, I have also used a digital camera in the class to make a picture book remake of Ten Apples Up On Top and a getting to know you book with a short interview and photo of each child from the first day of school. We make memory books of all the children through the year and love comparing their first day picture to their end of the year picture!
There are so many great uses for a digital camera in the classroom. Even the youngest child is somewhat familiar with them. I once left my camera at home and wanted to get a picture of something that moment, so I found a 35mm camera in my desk drawer and used it. All the kids came to me, grabbing for the back of the camera asking to see the picture! I had to explain that it was an “old” camera and I would not be able to get the picture until the next day.
I have several children’s digital cameras for the children to use in our classroom during free play.
The children love to use them!
The only problem that I have found is that the children sometimes forget to turn the cameras off and the batteries run out. The batteries are expensive to replace.