Digital Pictures in my classroom

I am fascinated by the impact of technology on the classroom. Especially digital cameras.

Two interesting places I'm seeing their impact.

One:
Today I just finished marking a science project that my students do. I send them home with a package of science experiments to complete at home to explore the wonder of God's amazing world.

I've been teaching this unit for years, but this year's results were very different from what I've had in the past.

You see, I included in my assessment tool, which the students received before they started, the fact that they could earn extra credit if they included pictures of their experiments.

Since they had to submit their logbook of experiments digitally it was fairly trivial for them to upload pictures into the document.

I think that next time I would like to make the pictures mandatory. The quality of their reports was light years better because they had pictures and I gained a better sense of what they had done because of them.

Two:
I'm teaching students how to use microscopes right now.

In the past I taught them how to make field of view drawings and tried to get them to put in better pictures than this:


A couple of years ago one of my students took his iPod and did this:



So this year I told my students that instead of drawing them they could use their iPods if they wanted. I also gave them a tutorial video on how edit their pictures in GoogleApps so that they could add the labels we would need.

Not one student has opted to draw them by hand.

Here's why:

The wing of a fly taken with my iPhone 4 camera.

A New Way of Teaching!

Except.....that it isn't.

So, if it's the same lessons and the same assignments I've always taught why did I just spend the last two months busting my behind digitizing my second science unit of the year?

So now it's entirely paperless and all the direct instruction is recorded on video. So what? It's the same things I would have had them do on paper, and the same things I would have said out loud in class. It's all the same, so where's the benefit?

Why spend all that time and effort, hours and hours of it, trying to do this?

Here are a few reasons:

1. Students can't misplace their paper. Their assignments are available to them anywhere and anywhen they have an internet connection.
2. When a student is missing it's a lot easier to catch them up. Not easy, just easier. (I've got one student from the last unit who missed way too many days and is having a hard time catching up.)
3. When I'm not sick, or not feeling well the lessons don't degenerate. The teaching quality remains the same.
4. The lessons are closer to the student. I always put the camera in the perspective of the student. So now, when I'm talking about the parts of the microscope, instead of me standing way up at the front of the classroom pointing at some small part of the microscope, I have the camera up close and can even zoom in so that students can actually see what I'm talking about.

And I've got a few more, but none of those reasons are really enough to justify the effort.

Here's what is.

I am no longer tied to the front. Instead of standing at the front trying to keep everyone's attention, trying to remember what I say next I am free to observe and interact with students. I can actually observe what the students are learning, or not. I can see where students are struggling and look to improve things.

This is where the value really appears. I can now reflect on my teaching and start thinking about how to change things.

It's what happens next when things really get interesting. I can hardly wait to find out!

A broken classroom.

I've come to believe that the classroom as we know it is broken.

I want to push the limits, explore what is possible, to build a classroom that serves every child who walks through the door.

I'm busy jumping off cliffs, trying new things, failing, getting up and trying again.

I'd like to get my fellow teachers to do the same thing.

I'd like to see them give up on their years of expertise, the craft they've honed so carefully, the classroom they love and are comfortable in.

Give it all up so they can go back and be a first year teacher again. Clumsy, stumbling, making mistakes, feeling foolish, having to struggle to find the way forward.

I have no idea how to convince them to do that.

I'm just going to keep plugging away in my room trying things. Some of them even work.

Maybe they'll follow.