Wednesday, July 7, 2010

June Photo A Day Challenge

JunePAD I have made it a half of a year continuing with the Photo A Day Challenge on Flickr. If you haven’t done this before, you might give it a try. You might try it was a week challenge or a month challenge. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t start at the beginning of the year. The reason that I suggest this is that I have found so many benefits for this and want to share them with you.

I look closer at the world around me. I am more attentive to the little things. When I first started, I mostly looked at the big picture. This project has helped me look for the details.

I try to find something interesting every day. I’m not talking about just interesting to me but thinking about what might be interesting to others.

I am collecting photos that I may use in presentations that are more interesting than clip art. I think about photos that I have looked for when I am creating presentations and when I see something that might fit; I take a photo of it.

When I am at a loss for an idea, I got to The Daily Shoot which gives an assignment for the day. Sometimes that can inspire me.

It can get others involved in helping me look for good shots too. When I’m with my friends and mention that I am taking pictures for this project, they get caught up in the hunt too. At times, they will call me over to take a photo of something they think would make a good photo of the day. At the end of the day, I have lots of photos to choose from.

At the end of the month, I like to look at all of the photos I took that month to see what caught my eye and if I see any trends or themes for the month.

After reflecting about this project, I wonder how I could get my class to do something like this.

I could do it as a class project and have students give suggestions about what they think would make a great photo. If there was more than one digital camera, students could take turns getting a photo of something. Or if there was only one camera, students could have a designated day to be responsible for taking the photos that day and then turning in the camera to the teacher. The students could vote on the photo they think should be the designated Photo of the Day.

Students can take turns coming up for a theme of the month and looking for photos that fit that them.

The Photos of the Day can be used as story starters for creative writing.

Have you done this project before or are you doing it now? Please let me know and give the link to your photos so I can look at them. If you have ideas how this project can be used in the classroom, please share that too!

Posted on the Successful Teaching Blog by loonyhiker (successfulteaching at gmail dot com).

Original Image: June Photos of the Day by Pat Hensley

2 comments:

Magical Mystical Teacher said...

I use my own photos exclusively on my blog, but I never thought of "arming" my kids with cameras so they could start noticing small things too. Thanks for the idea!

luckeyfrog said...

I think it might be interesting to have "Class Photographer" as one of your jobs. We change jobs each week, and I'm thinking it would be great to have someone designated as the person who remembers to run and get the camera when we do something fun! (I always forget until after the fact!)

I've always thought it would be great to have STUDENTS put together a class newsletter of the week (or blog). Wouldn't it be neat to have students write articles and students take pictures and students that put together the whole newsletter? It would take a lot of time, but I think it would be great. Even if I didn't do it all the time, it might be a great motivating project before winter or summer break!

I think they could work for assignments, too! (Take the camera home and take 3 pictures of rectangular prisms you find, for example!)