The Classroom Camera

Although your classroom may be tech-poor, chances are you can gain access to at least 1 digital camera - even if it is your own - even if it's just a cell phone camera! Although more would make certain things a little easier, one is really all you need to do a lots of great things! There are some activities that can be done as a class and the teacher takes the pictures, and some where you could group the students and then easily stagger their picture taking time. What kinds of great things can you do? The things that make learning more personal, engaging, and visual for your students. So for the purposes of this blog (the need to get tech ideas in a sec), we'll keep our list short.

1. Visualize the spelling/vocabulary list for the week. For elementary students, this can be a fast but fun activity. Put the list of words up and talk about them a little. You can ask the students to show what a word means through some kind of pose, use of props or other creative means. Take a picture! Do that for all of the words on the list. This picture activity not only visually documents the students' interpretation of the words, but the act of "acting out" or visualizing the meaning of the words is an activity that will help the students to better learn the words. You can print out the pictures and post them by the list, or load them into a simple PowerPoint that your run on your overhead projector whenever you do a review of the words. Students can see the pictures and then use their own paper or mini dry erase boards to guess and spell the words. Lots of fun - especially when the students themselves are in the pictures!

2. For older students, split up a word list - and give a pair or threesome of students their word group. Let them take the camera and get a shot of their own interpretation of the words (they will have to discover the definitions on their own). Either print the pictures or project them. Have other students guess what the word is - or have the students who took the picture give clues or describe the meanings. This often becomes a contest about creativity among the students - figuring out the most interesting way to interpret a word visually.

3. Picture scavenger hunts - especially useful when teaching an abstract concept, like "democracy". Students can use the camera to set up a scene that is meant to capture a key concept like equality, majority rule with minority rights, etc. This is a great way to teach students to think metaphorically as well, and modeling for them ways that a simple visual image can convey many ideas without being literal.

4. Story board planning - really fun for group stories! Set up a story board for students to work with (individuals or groups could easily do this). Have students plan their plot, characters, and scenes by using photographs. The story boards can be digital - in Comic Life (installed on all teacher Macs), or even on a simple slide show like PowerPoint, or Google Presentations. The story boards could also just be a large chart of paper - pictures could be printed in black and white and tacked up onto the story board. Students can visualize points of plot, characters, and order. There are also tons of great online digital storytelling tools if you want to go that route, like Storybird, Picture Book Maker, or Kerpoof, just to name a few.

5. Summarizing - learning to summarize the key points of a story or piece of information is an important skill for students. Summarizing using a picture or two can help more visual students hone this skill. After reading a chapter in a book or a section or scene in a story, ask the students to come up with an idea for a scene that would capture the essence of the message.

The great thing about using photos this way in the classroom is that you can have a lot of fun discussions modeling how pictures can tell many stories. Put together a simple PowerPoint for the projector and fill it just with images that you can discuss with the students. Google Images, Flickr, and Picasa are fantastic sources of crowd-sourced pictures that you can easily narrow down by category. Select a set that you think would make for a great discussion (depending on what you are teaching - i.e. summarizing, metaphorical representations) and just drag those photos to your slide show - no need to type any text. Or, you can even snap your own photos of people and places the kids know around town or the school for the same effect. This makes even a modeling lesson engaging and lively!

Use podcasts to make student assignments superfast!

I think I have blogged about this before, but I think this one's worth a repeat because it is such a huge time saver, not to mention a great way to differentiate instruction for your students. It's...podcasting! Contrary to popular belief, podcasts are not the domain of super-fancy special projects - they're everyday stuff. Making them is so so easy - easier than you can imagine, and believe it or not - faster than the way you are making your assignments right now!

First I'll tell you how I use it as a time-saver, and to differentiate, then I'll tell you how to do it.

Using podcasts as a time-saver:
A big way I use podcasts is instead of worksheets, plain and simple. If I want my students to answer questions about something, respond in a certain way, do a simple activity with a partner within the assignment, etc. a podcast is a quick and easy way to do this. I simply create a quick podcast then load it onto an iPod or 2 or 3. Making assignments this way is almost the equivalent of me sitting one-on-one with a student, and talking them through a series of activities. Sure you could do the same thing on a work sheet but that's soooo much typing, and for students that's soooo much reading - a major barrier for some.

Sure there are ways to make fabulous, glamorous podcasts - but what I'm talking about is simple, music-less, down and dirty, one-take kind of stuff. Students can easily make up a missed assignment without you having to repeat or recopy. Very easily adaptable for younger and older students, and a great way to introduce very young students to working independently. You can also easily read a children's book into a podcast and ta-da! You've created a listening center podcast for students to read with. Students can create them too!

Using podcasts to differentiate instruction:
I can make different podcasts for students quite easily - after all, I'm not typing up worksheets, I'm just talking for about 3 minutes per assignment. Students can respond to the activities on my podcast any way I direct them to - through writing, completing some kind of project, doing an activity or discussion with a partner, anything! Best of all, they can pause me and replay me as many times as they need. I can even lecture a little bit!

Quick! Create a podcast in 8 simple steps:
1. Open GarageBand, click "Create New Podcast Episode",

2. Name your project/assignment with an identifier you'll remember or recognize.

3. Once in your podcast screen don't be confused by all the bells and whistles - you won't need them. Just click on the head of "male voice" or "female voice" whichever applies to you.

4. Then click the round red button and start talking.

You don't have to be perfect, but have some idea of what order you are going to do things in. Make sure you state things clearly and pause a little. Make sure you say item numbers so students know when you are moving on to a new activity or problem. Pause for a second or two so they have a chance to pause the iPod.

5. Click the red button again when you're done.

6. Go up to the Share menu and click "send song to iTunes."

7. Name your playlist appropriately so you can save more than one thing to it in the future.

8. Once you've done this your podcast is on your iTunes. Simply go there and the next step is to just sync your "playlist" with your iPod like you normally would. That's it - done! Wasn't that easy?

Where to get iPods? I have saved a couple of my older ones - I use an old iPod Mini,
my last Nano I had before I got my iPhone,

and a 4G Nano I bought on ebay last year for $40.

Any old working iPod will do. How do I let more than one kid listen? I use Belkin splitters I picked up at Fred's for $20 each. They split to five inputs - so 3 iPods become 15!

Once you do this you will see how easy it is . It is so much faster than making worksheets or typing up assignments, and so much more versatile.