Digital Camera Project Fosters Communication Skills

This article details the many benefits of educators' use of digital camera technology and provides an activity in which students practice taking portrait shots of classmates, manipulate the resulting images, and add language arts practice by interviewing their subjects to produce a photo-illustrated Word document. This activity gives upper-elementary or middle school students practice with: (1) using the basic techniques involved in taking a classmate's photo with a digital camera; (2) uploading the photo into a photo manipulation software package and making adjustments such as cropping, lightening, or darkening; (3) using language arts skills to conduct and word process an interview of the classmate for a classroom book; and (4) inserting the photo into a Word document. (Contains 3 figures and 2 photos.)