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Ideas for Using Digital Cameras in Your Classroom

Arts & Humanities

• Make photo postcards.  Glue light colored paper to the back of your photographs.  Draw a line down the middle of the postcard.  Your message goes on the left and the address goes on the right.
• When studying colors, walk around the classroom, school, or outside and take pictures of a certain color.  Insert the pictures into a PowerPoint booklet called, for example, “Things That Are Blue”.
• When studying composer in music, have students write an essay entitled “The Day I Met…”.  They will choose a composer to write about and then insert a picture of him/herself beside the picture of the composer.

Math

• When studying numbers, take the number assigned to you and make pictures of that amount of objects in your photos.  (For example, if you are assigned the number “4”, take pictures of 4 books, 4 chairs, 4 students, etc.)  

• When studying shapes, take pictures of various shapes and create a shape book or PowerPoint presentation using the photos you take.

• Have students take pictures of their favorite foods, colors, etc. Create a pictograph, bar graph, and circle graph from the information.

Practical Living

• Take photos demonstrating a particular physical education exercise.  Post it to a PowerPoint presentation before beginning the activity with the students.  Walk them through the activity using the pictures in the presentation.

• Have older students studying careers create business cards with their pictures on them.

Reading

• When studying the alphabet, create an alphabet book by having the students take pictures of objects that begin with each letter.

• When studying rhyming words, have students take pictures of objects that rhyme.  Place the pictures in a Rhyming Book.

Science

• Make a classification book in which the students include pictures of objects that are alike.  (For example, “Things That Are Hot”, “Things That Are Cold”, “Natural Objects vs. Objects Made By Humans”, “Common Plants”, “Common Flowers”, “Simple Machines”, etc.

• Make a “Body Parts” book.  Take pictures of head, arms, shoulders, legs, knees, trunk, toes, fingers, etc.

• When studying weather, have students take pictures daily of the weather outside.  At then end of the week/month, have students create a calendar using the digital photos of the daily weather.

• Create your own "nature trail" by taking photos on a nature find. Study mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, and spiders. Learn to identify trees, flowers, and other plants. Students can then write a story or create a presentation with original photos and writing.

• Study the growth and structure of crystals and capture their development through digital photos. Students will have a permanent record of these delicate formations at various stages.

Social Studies

• Create a photo essay about your neighborhood.  Take photographs and write a description for each photo.  Mount the photos on a large piece of brown wrapping paper or banner paper.
• Create a brochure about your town using photographs of interesting places and people.
• Create a “Day in the Life” photo time capsule of your class.  Take photographs every half hour during the school day.  Write descriptions of what was happening during each photograph.  Mount into a booklet or publish using Microsoft PowerPoint.
• Make a photographic family tree.  Take photographs of your family members.  Crop the faces and create the document in Microsoft Word or Microsoft PowerPoint using the correct organizational chart.
• If you are identifying careers or community helpers, children should be able to take pictures of people in different careers and create a “Careers” or “Community Helpers” or “Places In Our Neighborhood” publication.
• Create a “Symbols” publication…have students take pictures of a stop sign, handicap parking sign, American flag, bald eagle, ladies’/men’s restrooms, etc.  How many symbols do we have in our school; our neighborhood; our community?
• Have students create an electronic time capsule to describe our world and our culture at the present time. Students should write to justify why they made the choices they did to put in the capsule. After they are saved on disks, hold a discussion about how technology has changed and will continue to change our world.
• Students learn about their community by creating a community awareness booklet, brochure or presentation. They study and photograph their community's government and services, agriculture, industry, retail businesses, and recreational and social facilities. In the process, they learn what makes a city work and they can share their findings with others.

Writing

• Take photos to illustrate a favorite story or poem.  Put the photos and words together in a book.

• Be a photojournalist! Photograph events at school or in your community. Write a news story to go along with the photos. Use Microsoft Publisher to create an illustrated newsletter.

• Make a proper noun-common noun publication. The students are to take a picture of something that is a common noun and then find its proper noun companion. 

• Have students create “thank you” cards that include digital pictures.

• Use a photo as a prompt for narrative or descriptive writing.

• Write a class novel with photos as illustrations.

• Create a sequencing book.  Using a digital camera is especially useful to sequences which cannot be brought to school for students to experience.

• Take photos on field trips and have students write about the experience later.

• For younger students, create an “All About Me” book or presentation.  Have students take photos of themselves and others and write about them for the publication.

• When studying writing perspectives or points-of-view, have students take a picture of an inanimate object and write a piece from its point of view.

• Allow older students to check out the camera for a 24-hour period. Have students take pictures to document their lives and write about each picture. They can create a book or presentation for the final assessment piece.

Other

• As students are learning the names of the days of the week or calendar months, create a slide presentation demonstrating what they do on particular days.  For the months, take pictures of things that could happen during each month.

• Take pictures to illustrate the steps in a procedure.  (For example, a lab experiment, PE exercise, etc.)

• Create a virtual tour by having students take pictures while on a field trip.  Insert the photos into a PowerPoint presentation and have the students narrate the slide show with facts about the trip and descriptions of each photo.

• Capture classroom activities for a school/class newsletter, web page, or student portfolio.

• Provide the substitute teachers with a seating plan that includes a photo of each student.

• Take digital pictures of items in your classroom for insurance purposes (for example, computers, supplies, software, etc.)

• Present a slide show on parents’ night of students at work and play.

• Take pictures of your students to create digital ID’s for them.

• Scan in examples of your students’ work and insert them into a PowerPoint.  Set the presentation to loop and display it at Parents’ Night or Open House.

• Allow students to study details of small objects by scanning and resizing them.  For example, put a penny on the scanner and play with the settings to enlarge it to the size of a dinner plate and allow your students to study the details.

• Create a catalog of extra classroom resources that can be used by your students. (They can help with this!) Have them take pictures of all instructional materials that might be checked out (books, calculators, protractors, etc.) and create a catalog of supplies. Have a student librarian keep track of who has signed for each item.