Taking Great Lessons and Enhancing them with Technology

Every teacher has lessons that are” ringers.”  Guaranteed to get kids attention, engage them and lead to meaningful learning outcomes.  I always struggle with how to use these older lessons in the face of changing technology.  Especially when the new technology provides new learning methodologies.  New technology doesn’t mean we abandon tried and true learning strategies.  Instead it provides us opportunities to better educate our students.  I believe digital imagery is the easiest and most effective way for students to extend their learning in these types of situation.  Consider how simple it is to take a picture of a product, event or class activity and have your students reflect, analyze or compare.  Here are some reasons why using digital images to enhance great lessons is effective. 

Capturing a moment.  Often teachers run out of time because your class must end.  Capturing digital images of your student’s classwork allows you to capture that activity.  The next day, you can bring it back as a bell ringer, learning objective or some other class activity.  Students will quickly connect with the lesson and be ready to go.

Sharing is easy.  With programs like Google Drive, DropBox and Box, it’s easy to capture and share digital images.  You can have student take an image and “mark it up”, make comparisons or create new learning products.  These creative activities require students to aspire to higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy.

Technology is Everywhere.  Capturing images is easier than ever.  The other day I assigned one student to be the class “Photographer.”  With one Ipad she captured images for the whole class.  We went for a walk, talked outside.  After a day with several classes, I had 100’s of great images that I quickly uploaded to Google Drive and shared with the class. Whether its Ipads, cells phones or Chromebook, this is a great add on to any lesson.

In closing, look at your lessons.  Are there parts that can be improved with a real-life image of your students work?  Consider how much better sharing outstanding work would be if you had it captured in an image collage?  Or comparing and contrasting two great examples of student work.  The possibilities are endless. 

If you are interested in learning more about capturing images or creating image mark ups, check out these lessons.

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