Using Digital Photography, Photobucket and Captioning

I recently put my digital camera to the test. My students took pictures of eachother in each of their centers. Putting a camera in their hands allowed them to take ownership of their learning experience and really gave them a lot of confidence.

For my digital photography project I wanted to proceed with the project idea I mentioned in my blog on Digital Photography. Along with posting the pictures in each center so that students new and old have a reminder of what the READ 180 classroom should look like, I decided to create a slideshow using photobucket. Through the website I found a new gadget that allowed me to REMIX the old slideshow. The REMIX" has capabilities like adding funny faces, mustaches, and glasses! I opted out of those options for this project. What I found most useful were the thought bubbles and captions.

I completed this project before I read and researched captioning and how teachers encorporate it into their photos and videos. They do this as an innovative way to draw their students into reading by adding captions to videos and photos of interest to them. I added the captions and thought bubbles myself, but when I use digital photography and digital video again, I would allow my students to come up with their own captions. This would give them the opportunity to reflect on their experiences. Watching videos gives them the opportunity to build background knowledge and adding captioning to videos allows them to take what they already know and have learned and build on their newly acquired knowledge by adding their language through captions in these videos.

I plan on using this slideshow at the beginning of next year at open house or the first week of school as a neat way of inviting parents and new students into the READ 180 classroom. My current students loved seeing themselves and the pictures are a constant reminder of what their READ 180 community should look like and really encouraged them to take ownership of their learning environment.

http://s94.photobucket.com/albums/l85/tlr2611/?action=view&current=b4a21015.pbr