Digital Imagery

The article I read this week comes from http://thejournal.com/articles/17145_2

The article is titled Increasing Visual Literacy Skills With Digital Imagery
By:Dr. Lance Wilhelm from Arizona State University- West Campus

Before reading the article I kind of knew what digital imagery is. I mean I have a digital camera and I love it. I use for just about everything! I had no idea that using digital cameras was becoming so popular in curriculm. It does sound like a fresh new idea for a teaching strategy. Society relies to higher degrees on images and visual communication strategies. Therefor this strategy of communication should be taught to children as well. For students to be more marketable in modern society they must aquire these digital skills. This type of curriculm captures children's interest and is more easily understandable. It helps the students focus on higher levels of processing and problem solving. Students gain visual literacy by using digital cameras.

The college of education at Arizona State Univeristy- West Campus students use what they call a "camera cart." The program enrolls three hundred students a semester. The very first semester the students were introduced to these carts they ALL used them. From the year 2003-2004 the camera cart was used fifty times by sixteen different teachers in the Arizona State Univerity area. A course that the education program requires all students to take is called C'E 313, Educational Technology in K-12 Curriculm. The course is in effective integration of technology in the classroom.

One teacher gave examples on how she uses the digital camera in her classroom. On the first day of every class she takes a picture of each student, then writes down their contact information, then puts it on word document, prints it out, and puts it into a binder. She said that it is so easy to do and it makes her life so much more organized. She also will take pictures of the whiteboard when a student puts important notes on it.

Students love field trips. What a great way to capture the experience of one with a digital camera. I know that when I was in elementary school I used to take a little wind up camera so I could take pictures. But, I could never look at the pictures right a way or even edit them. For my Bio of South West Florida class and my Colloquium class I take my digital camera on all the field trips.

I think that I would use this type of technological curriculm in my classroom, especially to organize myself.