my school

My Y2 student, Luke, and I started the project with Year 6 on Wednesday 14th Jan. I had spent some time preparing a Powerpoint Presentation that started with plenty of images - mostly my own - that would hopefully inspire the kids and encourage them to think about a range of creative possibilities for using the camera to explore their environment at school. We outlined the project, explained what we hoped they would achieve and showed them examples of the 'image wall' idea that we may use as a structure for the final presentation. The children responded really enthusiastically contributing lots of great image ideas and asking good questions. 

Then we took them through some digital photography basics related to image size, purpose and resolution. We even had them doing pixel maths to work out the megapixel rating of the cameras they would be using given the largest image setting available!! 

We finished off by showing them the cameras they would be using for the project and explaining the controls.

The following week their teacher had divided them into groups of 4 so Luke and I took a group each for an hour to take their pictures. We shot some outside the school - in the playground, on the field and so on. It was quite a bright day and the cameras were a bit difficult to use because of the glare on the LCD screens. I wanted to get the children to take several shots of each subject so they could really get a good idea of how different angles can change the shot. It was almost impossible to get them to do this as they couldn't really see the images clearly to review them. They were also buzzing with ideas and eager to try lots of different subjects. It was also difficult to get them to control focus. They tended to go very close the the subject and it was difficult to get them to understand that the lenses wouldn't produce sharp images used this way. We showed them the macro mode to help remedy this.

It was freezing cold so after 20 mins or so we went back into the school and were able to photograph in the library, corridors and Y6 classroom where their classmates were working. They were told to move around as unobtrusively as possible and did a good job. 

The plan was to take two more groups for the second half of the afternoon so we needed to clear the memory sticks into named folders on the school server. This was a very frustrating task. It took ages to log onto the system and the computers are just so slow. Apparently ICT is about to be upgraded in the next couple of weeks so I look forward to improvements. It was great to see  the children's work on the screens as we copied it across, but we  were severely behind schedule for the second groups, who approached their task just as enthusiastically as the first once we got started.

At the end of the day Luke and I spent another hour copying and backing up the images - time that we had not factored into the project. Next week I think we need to restrict the children to 45 mins per group to keep to schedule.

So far this project is going really well. I am so impressed by the children's creativity  and ideas.