Brief Description

Students will compare and contrast the processes and results of creating photo essays using traditional 35mm cameras and digital cameras.

Standards and Frameworks

Technology Standards

• 4T-F2. Use technology tools for individual and collaborative communication activities to share products with audiences inside and outside the classroom

• REACH Third-grade curriculum requiring the development and evaluation of Photo Essays and
• VP-F2 for Language Arts: Plan and present a report, using two or more visual media.

Academic

• Students will compare and contrast the processes and results of creating photo essays using traditional 35mm cameras and digital cameras.

• Students will use a variety of tools to plan, design, and present an academic product to share with audiences inside and outside the classroom.

• Knowledge of how to use both traditional 35 mm and digital cameras.
• Knowledge of how to use a scanner to transfer the image of photographs taken with a 35 mm camera onto a Word document.
• Keyboarding skills.
• Knowledge about the concept of photo essays.

• A digital camera for students to share.
• A floppy disk on which to store digital photos for each student
• A scanner.
• A color-capable printer.
• Printer paper.
• A traditional camera for each student.
• Poster boards.
• Markers, crayons, colored pencils, construction paper.

Buddy up students with special needs with more capable students.

Procedures

• After studying the use of photographs to tell stories through a variety of Internet sources and attending a workshop at the Center of Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, students will use Sidney Parnes' "Creative Problem Solving" process to determine where the best place for the class to go would be to take photographs for their photo essays.
• Prior to doing their photographic fieldwork, students will plan their photo essay:
• the type (fiction, documentary, thematic, or process).
• the type of photos they will take (people, places, or things).
• the techniques they learned about through their studies (use of a "birds eye view", a "worm's eye view", distance shots, close up shots, black & white film, or color film).
• While doing their fieldwork, students will take photos using a digital camera and their own 35 mm camera (point and shoot recyclable cameras work fine for this work).
• After having their film developed, students will bring two sets of their photos to class.
• After setting up a schedule for use of the computer lab, the classrooms computers, and the scanner; students will create two photo essays: one using poster boards, markers, crayons, colored pencils, construction paper (and any other materials they might have to design their essays--stickers, feathers, stamps, etc.); and the other consisting of 35 mm photos they scan and transfer to their floppy disk as well as the photos they took with the digital camera.
• After completing their essays, students will evaluate their own work and the work of two of their REACH peers to determine the level of quality.
• After evaluating all photo essays created by the students, the teacher will facilitate a discussion comparing and contrasting the use of digital and 35 mm traditional cameras and resulting products.
• The best quality essays will be displayed at the Center of Creative Photography during their annual Family Day event held each spring.

The quality of the students' work will be judged using a teacher-made evaluation form.

Teacher Name: Diane Harland
Site: Holaway
Date Submitted: November 28, 2001