Being part of the photo a day project has been for the most part a great learning experience. Prior to this year, I had been an avid flickr user and photography enthusiast. This project has elevated this and strengthened my appreciation for the power of imagery, composition and community.
Imagery
I’ve written at lengths and perhaps ad nauseum about the value of imagery. But the idea of mindful seeing is certainly something that has become a part of my day. Good storytellers listen intently to others. They find beauty in words. I remember a few years ago reading about Barbara Ganley taking her camera on walks and her efforts to embed photography into her writing classes. The idea of always having a camera with me stuck. My family and friends know it’s always with me and they too are seeing things they never saw and calling on me to capture moments. This is actually one reason I’ve fought moving to a larger SLR and have stuck with my compact camera.
Composition
One of the greatest features of digital photography is the low cost of failure. Taking a photo everyday forces you to be creative. It’s been interesting to develop vocabulary and understanding of composition and at the same time playing without really understanding why I’m doing what I’m doing. I’ve taught several introductory courses on digital photography and can’t emphasis enough the value of taking a gazillion photos. No doubt it adds to her workload but I’m better at culling prior to downloading. Yet it still takes time. I still use iPhoto as my primary orgainzer/editor. I’m comfortable with its funtionality. On rare occasions I use Aperture or Fireworks but iPhoto is my mainstay.
Community
This is obviously the key to this project. I subscribe to all the members of this group and have pretty much viewed all their photos. Knowing we are all trying to learn together, and yet have no formal ties, makes this a really interesting community. I’ve definitely learned from many and at times consciously and other times subconciously have copied their styles. Why wouldn’t you? The community has also done well encouraging one another via comments. Of the 52 members, I’d say almost all have kept up and are active and those who have not, who cares?
I’d like to set up something similar for our schools this year. I’m not sure how I’d structure it but knowing the value I’ve found in this along with my push to include more intentional uses of images in learning makes think I have to figure out how. Any ideas are welcome.
It’s funny I never thought I was creative until in my 30’s as a teacher I was taking some courses in gifted education. Our professor was a proponent of using art as an assessment tool.
It was sharing my art that proved to me that just because I couldn’t actually draw very well didn’t mean I wasn’t creative. I wonder sometimes how different my life would have been if I had spent more time and energy in my one photography class.
Brendans last blog post..Poetry
Dean, I shared your enthusiasm for communicating via imagery, so no ad nausea here. I’m quickly cooking up an activity for Learning 2.008 I’d like to share as soon as… I build a few more pieces. I’m thinking of another future session that not only includes expressing in imagery, but the use of metaphors on both images and words.
Another amazing note about 366photos- it was completely unplanned, unorganized, and has grown organically. I am thinking perhaps it is an “Un-Project”
Dean,
I’ve taken hundreds, probably more than a thousand, pictures this year. I wish I had known about the 366! Could we pick a day or a week to chronicle: one of the winter holidays, a solstice, or any random date or time period? Or we could photograph everything we eat for a day or week (might be very enlightening)?
dianes last blog post..Kaleidoscope
Brendan,
I share you views on discovery creativity. I certainly didn’t view myself as creative but I do now. I think some of these tools are revealing creativity in many more of us. Again, the low cost of failure really makes this work.
Alan,
No doubt the unplanned, organic nature of this is worth noting. The structure or unstructuredness makes for engaged, personalized learning.
Diane,
All those ideas are good and very easily done in flickr. Just today I noticed one of my students from last term has been involved with a number of flickr groups with varying degrees of participation and success.
I love the idea, but I am drawn more to video than stills. I love the cheap video cameras and the ability they give us to record information so easily. Obviously, the content delivery is not as important as the content with video.
Wm Chamberlains last blog post..Floating and Sinking Investigate 1
Imagery is a useless medium and can hardly be used to send a message. Or something like that.
Darren Drapers last blog post..21st Century Teaching and Learning
Wm,
I think the two are somewhat different literacies. While I love video and use it a lot, as you know it’s a much more involved process. It requires more complex ideas and work and too often time is the enemy to producing quality video. With images, it’s more likely to achieve a level of proficiency.
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Hi Dean
Here are a couple of links where we tried to get this underway.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/photo-a-day4schools/
http://photoaday.wikispaces.com/
It was fun to start with but we didn’t manage to keep it going for some reason. Well worth trying again though.
Paul Wilkinsons last blog post..Go animate
I discovered your blog for the first time. i am happy to be able to use my digicam. No need to try video.
Keep up your creativity!
No doubt it adds to her workload but I’m better at culling prior to downloading. Yet it still takes time. I still use iPhoto as my primary orgainzer/editor. I’m comfortable with its funtionality. On rare occasions I use Aperture or Fireworks but iPhoto is my mainstay.
I think that the yearlong picture challenge is such a unique idea. I love photography, so this would be interesting for me to try to do. I think that the vast array of photos that would be collected through-out a year could be very useful in the classroom. There are so many ways you can include photographs into lesson plans and other projects. I think it would also be a good idea to try to take a photo a day within my classroom for a year. I know that we would have to make sure that each student has a permission form to be photographed. Taking pictures in the classroom for a year would allow both me and my students to remember what we did and learned during the year. We could also create an end of the year project reminiscing about the things we did and learned. In this project, they would be able to look through all of the pictures and use the ones that remind them of what we did.
Also, It has been interesting to look at flickr. I had never heard of that before reading your blog. It has some very unique features.
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