Cheeeeese & Snapped!

Have you seen the old school camera? I think that is an awesome camera, Camera is awesome, it is fascinating even to adults like me. Sometimes when I am holding a camera, I keep forgetting how much pictures left I can capture since all I need to do is just point and shoot. Gone were the days where every shot is precious and limited. With a memory card, we can just snap away as many as we want.

Source: Google Image

Cameras integration into the classroom can bring meaningful learning experiences to both the teachers and the students. It can be used in variety of ways beyond taking photos of the happy smiling faces. First off, camera can be used in assisting observation and assessment for the learning of the students in terms of photos to be included in their portfolios or perhaps a video recording of how the teacher teach for self improvement and personal development progress. Other than that, recent issues in education related to cameras would be filming teachers in classroom.

Now let's look into using it within the learning progress,

As I was reading my peer's blog regarding how she uses camera in the classroom, I looked back at the times that I brought a camera into the classroom yet for the use of taking photos for assessment purposes only and non educational purpose. Winnie in her blog wrote that  she actually let the children use the cameras to document the growth of a caterpillar into a butterfly, taking pictures of the life cycle from day to day. That was rather interesting! How come I never thought of doing that? Should have!

Source: Google Image

Check out this blog here on how this particular teacher uses camera in her classroom for the works of documentation, projects with the children and so on. 

So why and how do we to use digital camera in the classroom?

Well, we have to admit that digital cameras have many benefits when used in the classroom. With the recent drop of price for digital camera, it becomes more affordable for the school to purchase and each family will atleast have one in their homes. Camera nowadays are much more easier than those old models. Simply turn to AUTO and it's just a click away. Teachers can capture pictures of the works of the children and show it to the parents of the children such as the child's work of blocks, drawings and more. Children can also take photos to make a photo story of their learning, or perhaps taking photo of something meaningful that happened in the classroom today and write a paragraph to describe it. Besides that they could take photos of their friends and describe them. Cameras can be used in field trip too, as the students could capture photos and write or tell about them orally in class later on. 

What is that has been binding us teachers from using the camera in our classroom if it is so affordable and easy to use as compared to the ones before.

1. Teachers are afraid that the children breaks the camera, teachers do not fully trust the children in handling something that costs a lot.
2. Time consumption for sharing only one camera
3. Low of budget for getting a camera each for the children to use in classroom
4. many many more reasons!

I find it ridiculous! First off, sharing a camera would be useful in the classroom to teach them cooperation and sharing. Besides that, if we are too afraid to let the child hold our expensive camera that it might fall and break, get them a child friendly camera! bet you havent seen that one! Here it is, I came across this camera in Vicky's blog

Image from KidsZoomPlus

KidsZoomPlus offers amazing cameras built for kids, dropping it wouldn't be a big of a problem anymore. So what's your verdict on implementing and integrating cameras in your classroom? share it below at my comment section!