Implications and Teaching Opportunities for Camera Use in Teaching and Learning

This is a special assignment assigned to us by Dr. Strange. He gave us these recent findings from Zogby Analytics:

1. 87% say their smartphone never leaves their side.
2. 80% say the very first thing they do in the morning is reach for their smartphone.
3. 78% say they spend 2 or more hours per day using their smartphone.
4. 68% say they would prefer to use their smartphone instead of their laptop or personal computer for personal use.
5. 91% say that having a camera on their smartphone is important (61% very important)
6. 87% say they use their smartphone camera at least weekly. 59% use their smartphone camera at least every other day.
44% use their smartphone camera for still or motion picture taking every day.

Dr. Strange also gave us this extra information:
Cameras were added to smartphones starting in 2002. The first iPhone also had a camera. It became available in June 2007. Seven years later there are over 1.75 billion smartphones worldwide. (Source: emarketing) This means that 24.1% of the entire world population (7.263 billion as of 3:32 CDT 9/27/2014 - Source: World Population Clock) now has a smartphone. Your students will have lived all their life in a world with smartphones containing cameras.

From all of this information I can pretty much say that people who have smartphones, are probably attached to them. I know that I am guilty of this. People use their smartphones for so many different things. These include phone calls, cameras, email, social media, internet, and some can be used for GPS. From the sounds of it, all smartphone now, have a camera. I know that my smartphone has a camera. I don't own a personal camera, I use my smartphone for all my picture taking.

Technology is used in all aspects of todays world. It is especially used in the schools today. Teachers use technology to present their lesson to the class. This can also be used vice versa. The students can used technology to complete a project and then present it to the class for a grade. It is almost very important that a student might have a smartphone, tablet, or and iPad.

Photo Source: www.batterysource.com

There are many ways technology with cameras can be incorporated in learning tools for kids. These tools can also help cover Alabama College and Career Ready Standards in the classroom. Children could use their iPads, tablets or smartphones to record themselves reading, then watch it when they get done and correct their mistakes. They could also take pictures from their favorite book, and in their own words explain what is going on in the picture. Also, the student could take pictures of different things and this could help them compare and contrast. Using all of these things in the classroom could help bring diversity into the classroom. It helps kids with different ways of learning.