Saturday 21 January 2012

Photography in ECC

Since September, it’s been obvious that one my student's favourite parts of Connected Classroom are Errin’s teaching focus on digital photography. Students were thrilled to go on weekly photo shoots based on the given principle/element of design they were focusing on. Students spent the first five months of the year working on design, composition, and learning how to use our cameras creatively. Now that our students have created a large bank of personal photos, Errin has led us into a new and exciting realm of photography: editing!



Despite the limitations of our class net books, Errin has found us software and programs that give our students a whole new realm of artistic possibilities. Students spent a great deal of time last Thursday getting comfortable and playing with Picture Manager, Picnik and Paintnet. I think my class could have played with image editing all day.



Included at the start of each lesson, students share out their compositions from the previous week’s photo shoot. I’ve found this to be a powerful connecting tool, and it’s made students really connect faces to names from the other classrooms.  My class is always eager to share their own shots, and is just as eager to see what the other class created as well. It makes us more a part of each other’s daily lives and it gives us a context of what life is like in the other communities.



This Tuesday, we are welcoming Chris Bose into our classrooms as a guest artist. We’re very excited to have him share his story, art, and perspective to the classrooms and have him inspire our digital creations.

2 comments:

  1. I love the photo that you ended your post with! In one image, it speaks to the powerful learning that can be created through digital photography. Students love taking photographs and being behind that lens. It's so great to see the motivation and enthusiasm digital photography brings to the ECC!

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  2. They do love it! This is a shot from the after-school photography sessions I've done with some of the ECC kids. Pretty amazing when a third of the class stays after school for even more photography. They're so glad that you chose this as your teaching focus this year!

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