Question 3: How might you incorporate photo sharing into an educational activity or unit? What might be some concerns you would have about allowing students to play with these services? What might be a great benefit of such services?
Next year, we will have a classroom digital camera, and I thought it would be neat to assign a "photographer" on any given day, to take pictures of students participating in special projects, guest speakers, field trips, etc..., then post them to our photo sharing site.
This causes concern for me in two aspects:
1) The student "photographer" taking the role seriously. I would definitely need to establish expectations and training about how to handle the equipment, how to take worthwhile photographs, not to be distracting, etc...
2) Each student (or students' parents) would probably need to give permission to post pictures of them on the internet. It would likely require that I have them sign a waiver at the beginning of the year.
The greatest benefit that I can see is that it would boost classroom morale, and would effectively communicate to students that I think what they are doing/learning is neat and worth sharing with the public. Another benefit would be if I set up a slideshow on my website, then as pictures are added or rearranged on the photo sharing site, the slide show could change to show the most current photos, which would be cool. I'm assuming that I could set this up to work automatically, but perhaps I'm wrong. Any input to that end is welcome!
Question 4: In reading Chapter 2, what similarities and what differences did you identify between the process the authors describe and the processes you have used to develop educational lesson plans?
In my program of study, we were taught the ROPES lesson planning tool:
Review (previous pertinent information)
Overview (today's lesson)
Presentation
Exercise
Summary
Here is an example
Be advised, a quick search on Google will provide no further helpful information about this format.
Along with the 5 main elements, the template provided asked for additional information, such as learning goals, objectives, suggested timeframes, required materials, etc.... The thing that I like most about ROPES is that it causes you to consider connections to past information, which reinforces that learning. It is also effective in reminding you to wrap up the lesson by processing or summarizing the learned information, which I believe helps to provide a more solid learning experience.
This only relates to the "Design" element of the ADDIE process discussed in the chapter. With that in mind, I suppose we could consider ROPES a design-planning tool to be used within the ADDIE planning tool, which is more inclusive of the entire process of developing an educational plan.
Dear readers,
ReplyDeleteI don't know why there is so much space between my paragraphs. In edit mode, it appears as a single line space. Any ideas???
Beth
for whatever reason the formatting of blogger.com is adding in extra code to create the lengths for some reason. You use try editing it directly using the "HTML" button in the editor. Look for lines like this:
ReplyDelete<"span" class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; ">
at the beginning of your paragraphs. Should be about two of these per paragraph I found. If you delete both the space will be "smaller".. but not necessarily exactly what you want. You could just write your own code and it would be perfect, but I don't expect you to do it. I'm really not sure why it did that to you.
I have never heard of the ROPES format. Thanks for sharing. For my internship we had to use ITIP. I haven't ever had to use such a formal lesson plan once I was hired as a teacher. My principal just tells us what we need to include and turn in each week.
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ReplyDeleteI tried out Picasa, Flickr, and Photobucket and found that Photobucket (thanks to Margie) has its own easy-to-use slide show tool. I had to use Google's AJAX Feeds API to create a slide show for a Picasa and Flickr album and it is a lot more complex (but more customizable).
ReplyDeleteWith Photobucket, the slide show will update instantly when you add or take away a photo from the slide show. The only downside is that you have to edit the slide show directly to change it. It will not automatically show, let's say, the last eight photos added to the album.
Using Google's AJAX Feeds API automatically updates the slide show as you add new photos. You would be able to configure it to show the last eight photos added. That's because Google uses RSS with its tool. The downside of using RSS is that the feed is not updated instantly. Supposedly it's refreshed about once per hour, but they are working on an updated version that will provide updates almost instantly. So while it is not as easy to do the initial set up, it takes care of itself once you get it running.
Great photo-sharing idea. I like the thought that what you have described could become a completely self run (or student run/led) project throughout the year. At the beginning of the year you give the ground rules and guidelines for the photos and those shared. Then let the students do the work. You would just have to monitor what was being posted. This would give your students a great sense of responsibility and promote leadership, group interaction, group cohesion, and many other useful skills.
ReplyDeleteMuch like Jenna, I have never heard of the ROPES format before. I was taught and have used the ITIP lesson format which seems to be a little more detailed than the ROPES format (which depending on how you look at it is either a positive or a negative). I have placed a link on my blog to an ITIP lesson if you are interested.
This year I subbed in a second grade classroom that had framed pictures of the whole class and groups of students placed around the room. It gave the space a homey feel. It also seemed to improve morale as you mentioned. I really liked your ideas about taking photos on field trips and with guest speakers. I hadn't thought of that before. I definitely think that having a rotation of class photographers would be an excellent lesson in creativity and responsibility!
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of a rotating class photographer, that way you will get pictures of everyone, not just the photographer's favorite friends. You will also keep them all involved and excited. A word of caution, though unless your students are over 18--you need permission from the parents to post anything. I don't know what type of camera you are getting, but one of the best investments you can make to go with it is extra memory cards--if you watch the adds you can get them on sale for between $10-$15 dollars. Another great investment is a secure digital card reader/writer converter. The one I have was about $50, but they have cheaper ones now. This acts as a jump drive--you put the memory card into it and you can plug it into any port on your computer and download your pictures directly to your computer. It saves having to load special software on your computer and is compatible with both Mac's and PC's.
ReplyDeleteMargie