Last week we had another introductory lesson for iPad use
with our First Grade students, which focused on taking pictures. We started by discussing why we might need to
take a photo of someone. Perhaps the
student might need an image of a person in the story he is writing. Maybe she is creating a photo collage to
demonstrate something learned. Teachers
want to have photos of students to document what is happening in the
classroom. There are so many reasons why
we might need to take a picture at school.
Now with iPads in the classroom, it is ridiculously easy to take multiple
photographs.
In the classroom – how do you make sure everyone is ok with
the picture? To demonstrate, the First
Graders acted out several scenarios and we created a flow chart on the
board.
1. Ask the other
person if you can take their picture.
If they say no – stop. Go find
another person and start over.
How often do teachers just start snapping away in class to
document the activity?
2. If the other
person says yes, take the picture, and then show it to the other person for approval. If he doesn’t like it, retake the picture
until it meets his approval.
I know as a teacher, I am often guilty of not doing this
step. When every child asks, “Can I see
the picture?” I am thinking that I have 24 kids to photograph and showing each
of them the picture will take time. In
reality, it isn’t too much time to show the picture and retake it if the child
requests. More often than not, children
are happy with what they see!
3. Once the picture
is taken and approved, tell the other
person what you are planning to do with it.
Then show them!
All of these steps may seem like very strict guidelines, but
we are looking at a life lesson here. If
children can learn at this young age that they need to ask to first take then share
someone’s image first, maybe then as these students get older, they will think
twice before posting an embarrassing picture of their friend.
One of my goals for the year is to constantly be aware of when
I am photographing the students in my class and letting them know. I plan on telling the children that I am going
to post the pictures to our class website and then showing it to them. I was able to put this process in practice
immediately as we made a grade wide movie trailer for a school assembly last
week. I had to explain to all 48 first
graders what was happening, why we were photographing them and retaking several
shots when students weren’t satisfied with the initial results. It didn’t take as much time as I thought it
would, and was a nice reminder to me that this is an important practice to
demonstrate as we are asking the students to do the same thing.
