Digital Cameras Wrap-Up

I learned several things from researching digital cameras over the past several weeks. For my last blog post on the topic, I thought I would sum up a few of those things that I think are important.

• There are many uses for digital cameras in the educational realm. One possible use is to incorporate them into the regular K-12 classroom curriculum as a tool to aid in student interest, understanding and creativity.
• I found an interesting article called Scholars Take Notes by the Megapixel, But Some Librarians Object that talks about how academic researchers often use their digital cameras as makeshift copy machines. There are pros and cons to this, but one of the major arguments for it is that it allows rare or endangered documents, books and so on to be preserved for posterity. The thought of bringing my camera into the library and taking pictures of book passages and so on never occurred to me, but the article is very interesting!
• I think that the best use of digital cameras for public libraries and/or K-12 public or private school libraries is the fact that they can add pizzazz to the library website. Librarians can use digital cameras to take pictures of their students/patrons, the library itself, new books, and various events and activities. These pictures can then be displayed on the library website, adding a sense of community to the site, and hopefully drawing more patrons/students to it. A library website with colors and shapes and pictures is generally more exciting and interesting than a library website that is not very interesting to look at, with no pictures and with lots of text and white space. An article that I found which discusses this is called Hot Shot from School Library Journal. It is a little older, but it includes some interesting links.

Starting next week, I will be blogging about digital storytelling. Have a great rest of Spring Break!