Using digital cameras in the classroom

I have had a difficult time finding resources that connect digital cameras to the classroom. Recently, though, I found several interesting articles on that very subject, one of which is attached to this post. The article is very interesting and discusses the practices of several teachers in a school district in Pennsylvania who use digital cameras in their lessons. The teachers mentioned teach different classes and not the classes that you would expect to use digital cameras.

The thing that I found the most interesting was that they connected digital cameras to social networking, and both of those things to use in the classroom. In my experience, when social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Flickr are mentioned in schools, it is as an opportunity to chide students about wasting their time and to warn them about the dangers of using those sites. This article presented social networking in a positive light, however, and acknowledged the fact that it is such an everyday part of many students daily life. Digital cameras go hand in hand with that, since so many students use them and then upload their pictures onto these sites. For that reason, digital cameras are familiar territory for most students, or if not, can be easily learned. They can be a great tool for students to use --- something that is both fun and familiar. The ideas that some of the teachers mentioned in the article about using digital cameras in the classroom are really great and could be easily incorporated.

http://www.thejournal.com/articles/21810
They Get the Picture from T H E Journal (Technological Horizons In Education)