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 Digital cameras are one of the single most successful Information and Communications Technology purchases you can make in a school. They enhance communication for students and teachers. Promote visual literacy - encourage students to use digital cameras! Welcome to the world of any time, any place photos. Digital cameras allow any one to enjoy photography. Friendly compact sized models now make it especially easy in the classroom or in everyday life! RELATED EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY TOPICS K-12: digital microscopes * time lapse photography * tips for travel * digital image samples *** using digital video with students ** wireless laptops in schools - significant educational benefits! * guide to video conferencing in classrooms * using LCD monitors in education ** USB flash drives * data projectors in schools
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1. Quick start How to get a photo taken and use it immediately in a document, email it as an attachment, include it on a web page, or ..... There are heaps of possible uses so grab a digital camera and lets start! Find the power switch (e.g. "OFF" or "ON/OFF" or "green button") - turn it on or switch from "OFF" to"ON" or 
positionSet the controls - usually to "RECORD" or
or "STILL" or "AUTO" or "green rectangle"
(not "MOVIE" yet!)Compose an image - use either the LCD viewer (most accurate image view) or optical view finder (easier in sunlight) Hold the camera steady Take a photo - press the shutter release button firmly all the way down - the button is usually in a similar spot to a traditional camera (there will normally be a click, beep or message to indicate a photo has been taken) Immediately check your photo by setting to "PLAY" or 
or "VIEW" - use the LCD viewer to confirm
you are happy with the result- if a zoom feature is available on your digital camera use this to enlarge the image to check 'up close' for a sharp focus - if the image is unsuitable (e.g. out of focus, badly framed, cluttered or poorly lit) then simply take another photo! Load the photo into your computer EITHER download images direct from camera via a USB cable (typically via an easy to access photo wizard or photo application) OR in cameras with removable storage you can also take the stored photos out of the camera by removing the memory card - e.g place memory card into USB card reader connected via USB cable (NOTE: some laptops include a dedicated memory card slot e.g. SD) Use the photo in your work eg1. Word document - Insert - Picture - From File - (choose location) eg2. Email attachment - Attach - File - (choose location) eg3. Web page - Insert image (choose location) (NOTE: some original file sizes from the digital camera will be too large to use in email or web pages without resizing - for instructions to help adjust a digital image visit http://www.zardec.net.au/keith/adapt.htm) Good software will typically also allow 'drag-and-drop' where you just point to the image, drag it onto the required place and drop it in! Extras: Delete unsuitable photos using cursor, "+"/"-" controls on a menu, rubbish bin or trash icon. Choose a suitable image quality (resolution) - you can take a few high quality photos or lots of lower quality photos Problems: No image? - press harder/longer on the shutter release button OR be sure the lens cap is off! No power? - check the battery life indicator - if flat recharge or change batteries No storage device present? - insert SD / compact flash / other media Storage device full? - insert new media OR delete images ! email option - some camera settings allow smaller images for quick email transfer or use on the web but avoid this if you will need to print the photo |
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2. Features - there are many positive (and some negative) features of digital cameras Positives - digital encourages faster learning, more fun and greater creativity with photography - immediate feedback (confirmation of photo, access to image - no time waiting for processing) - negligible running costs - images enhance communication (adding photos helps to share experiences - especially for visual learners, it is also much faster than trying to explain everything in words) - frees potential photographers of their inhibitions, encourages experimentation: okay to take chances, photograph anything! - the ease of sharing photos with others (via printouts, networks, email, websites, storage, etc.) - students new to photography appreciate a learning environment where there is no 'penalty' for mistakes - most photo processing shops now offer printing of digital images on to high quality photo paper - digital cameras promote visual literacy - easy to adjust mistakes with exposure or the affects of lens distortion with software (e.g. Photoshop CS) - it is no problem to share a digital camera with other people (including young students) - digital cameras with a high capacity memory card can take hundreds of photos - photos can be quickly enhanced or manipulated with software (e.g. Photoshop, Paintshop Pro) - images can be rapidly added to emails, documents, web sites, etc - there are many possible uses - 'no cost' photos encourage creative use (students can experiment with photographic technique) - learning is enhanced in many situations by use of images in addition to words - freedom for taking multiple images or sequences (no additional cost for extra photos) - series of digital photos can be 'stitched together' to create panoramas - digital cameras are able to cope with a wider temperature range than film - no need to wait for the end of a roll of film before processing - great photo composition training tool for people who also use film based cameras - tilt LCD screen allows composition of photos without raising camera to eye: great for avoiding students 'posing' in photos - ability to share photos worldwide via online albums - digital print kiosks allow user to choose which photos they want printed - freedom (I know people with quality multi-Megapixel digital cameras who now take up to 1000 photos a month because of all the advantages of digital cameras) Negatives - most ink jet prints of digital photos are lower quality than traditional photo paper prints - compression of the photo images for camera storage usually causes some loss of quality - can run out of storage space on computer (hard drive may fill up as photos archived to CDs or DVDs are more difficult to access) - some digital cameras have very slow response times - press the release but a photo is taken after subject has gone! - greater risk of losing your precious images (e.g. hard drive failure, Operating System corruption, viruses) - ease of taking photos may reduce students recognition of others sensitivity to being photographed (e.g. for cultural or personal reasons) - some digital cameras are quite complicated with a smorgasbord of buttons, menus or other digital choices. |
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Current desktop computer operating systems (Windows 7, 8 and Mac OS X) offer excellent support for digital still cameras and digital video camcorders. It is now much simpler to get images from the camera into the computer and to view, modify and organize the photos - even using a cable is now relatively easy with USB. Innovative new software allows easy correction of common problems (e.g. red eye from flash, parallax effects in buildings) and allows quick preparation of slideshows or photo albums. More high resolution digital cameras are now being purchased by schools. Many schools have a number of digital cameras (e.g. multiple low or medium resolution models for volume use by students and an advanced model for special purposes). The basic models are cheaper with a limited number of features. The advanced model typically involves high resolution, better optics and large capacity storage for outstanding image quality. However 80% of educational digital photography needs can still be met by using the more economical low or medium resolution cameras. Many of the 'clever' or advanced models require a much greater effort with training in operating the camera and using the very high resolution images. Most photo print shops in Australia and overseas now accept digital camera images for printing on photographic paper. Prints can be made direct from most digital camera memory devices and CD-ROMs containing copies of images. User terminals or kiosks are now widely available so users can self select photos from their own memory cards and choose print options. Multiple copies can also be requested. For orders of 20 or more costs in Australia have dropped to as low as 10 cents per postcard sized print. If your school has a special digital photography need then it is worth researching to see if a suitable product is now available. For the latest breaking news in digital cameras visit http://www.dpreview.com/. This site has very comprehensive coverage of daily developments in the digital camera field. There are now many economical 20+ Megapixel digital camera models
available in Australia. In addition there are also many high performance
professional or commercial digital cameras. |
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In addition to the standard still image many digital cameras also offer a video facility - it is great for a quick video clip for a slide show, web site or multimedia production.
A panorama can be produced with 'stitching' software. A series of digital photos are taken at regular intervals along the same plane. Each image should have 20%-40% overlap. Combined with a basic printer (<$100) and special iron-on printer paper
(~$1 a page) digital cameras can be used for custom T shirts. When the
digital images are modified by software then spectacular
effects are available quickly. The activity also lends itself to fund-raising. |
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Features include large colour liquid crystal display (LCD) panels so you can immediately see the photo taken, close-up or macro (to 1 cm), recording of sound or short movies, removable storage devices, removable lenses, quality bundled software, higher resolution, continuous or burst mode, use with video conferencing, time lapse, auto white balance with manual override, aperture control, email option, slideshow option within camera, output to television or computer projection systems, input from computers, zoom, remote controls, detachable LCD viewers, auto-focus, Photoshop plug-ins, faster shutter speeds (typically up to 1/8,000 sec), direct communication with compatible computers via infrared technology, software that transforms multiple still images of a scene into seamless 'super-wide' angle panoramic images or interactive 360° QuickTime VR movies, nominated time interval shooting, time and date stamps, touch sensitive screens, pen-based menu selection, file transfer (FTP), etc.
Viewers are essential! The immediate feedback given by the colour viewer on what they actually photographed allows them to take another image (if they mis-framed the photo, the subject moved, etc.). Both primary and secondary students can check the image for technical and artistic merit. They can retake images that do not meet their needs or were poorly composed. However screens can be difficult to use outside in bright sunlight so it is helpful to choose a model that also includes an optical view finder. An easy to use quality digital camera purchase will be fully used by
staff and students. The small size and versatility allow easy integration
of digital cameras into all parts of the curriculum. They are easily
shared between classrooms. Many schools are now buying additional units
due to digital cameras contributing to better and greater use of computers.
Obviously the digital camera should be well made and durable in a school
environment. For some tasks higher image quality is important
(e.g. you would like digital school photographs
published on posters, in newspapers or in magazines). One
publications strategy is to buy a quality digital camera capable of
at least 18 Megapixels and set the image settings to maximum resolution.
Another strategy is to check that the final image is at least 15 by
20 cm with a minimum resolution for the photo of 150 dots per inch (dpi).
Larger images or higher resolutions allow the publisher some editing
freedom. A good reference site is http://www.imaging-resource.com/IMCOMP/COMPS01.HTM
Identical test images can be down loaded for most major brand digital
cameras so that users can balance the image quality against the cost
and other features of a camera prior to purchase. |
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TOP Quick Start Features Advances Uses Buying Cameras Care Productivity Storage Accessories Special Editing Glossary Resources Credits |
UltraZoom - useful resolution
-
typically $300 - $600 Australian
- single camera with great zoom range and wide range of features without hassle of swapping lenses DSLR - high resolution - typically $500 - $3000 Australian - huge range of interchangeable lenses e.g. macro, telephoto, wide angle - suitable for A3 prints or publication, may include special features such as burst record mode, time lapse mode, etc. - require higher capacity memory cards - suggest minimum 8 GB, with 16 GB or more for top of the range cameras. A wide range of digital cameras are available
online (e.g. Australian
Digital Cameras Online, Byron
Bay Camera House, JB - Hifi, Plaza Digital, Teds Camera Stores) in camera shops, computer shops, duty free
shops, phone shops and discount stores. Many shops now include kiosks that will
print customers digital images on to photographic paper. Prices of digital
cameras vary widely - even for the same model - so it is definitely
worth checking the prices from 3-5 different sources. Once I even found a
website with online purchasing that actually had the same camera listed
twice on the site with 2 different prices - one was $100 higher! |
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I have used digital cameras extensively in education since starting in 1994 with a Quicktake 100. Over the years students in my secondary classes have taken many thousands of photos with digital cameras. I have also helped pre-primary and early primary students - sometimes it was their first opportunity to use a camera! When lecturing at University in courses involving learning technology or in teacher training for the Internet in the Curriculum Project the participants made frequent use of digital cameras. I have also used digital cameras with many primary students and teachers in classes and on school camps. Over the last 5 years I have also taken many photos of facilities in new schools and situations where students are making use of Information and Communication Technology. In all cases use of digital cameras has been highly motivational, contributed to greater integration of technology into the curriculum and proved an effective way of improving communication. To gain more skills with digital cameras I also use different models regularly with people from all ages in travel, sport, recreation and family situations. With the larger storage now available I can take as many photos as I see opportunities - sometimes up to a 1000 photos a day when on nature outings! My current focus is on the use of digital cameras for nature photography. A 2005 trip to Europe resulted in some travel tips. |
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The following are some of the common methods of storing photos
in digital cameras :- Some Australian online prices can be viewed at http://www.ramcity.com.au/flashfamily/Flash.htm
NOTE: Do not leave memory cards in card readers connected to a computer during startup (i.e. after you have turned on the power and 'booting' is in process) - operating systems such as Windows XP can automatically attempt to 'fix' the file structure of the memory card - this can result in the corruption or loss of photos stored on the memory card! File transfer from the digital camera to a computer
may require a memory card reader, floppy drive, USB cable, docking
station or PC card adapter. Another strategy is web based storage
where people transfer photos from the camera to a photo sharing site or other web site (e.g.
Apple iDisk, http://www.Freedrive.com,
etc). This works well for small image files or if you have fast
Internet access (e.g. broadband cable or ADSL). |
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Ink Jet Printers Digital Photo Printers Printer papers Although this article has concentrated on digital cameras do not forget the importance of flatbed scanners. Good quality single pass colour scanners are now available from ~$100. However it is often worth paying more for a model that offers one-touch convenience (e.g. HP ScanJet series). A combination of a digital camera, a colour scanner and image manipulation software is highly recommended. Another item to consider is a film or 'tranny' scanner to scan slides and negatives - schools can get effective models for under $1000. Other useful products include online photo sharing services
or software, photo archiving and photo retrieval software. |
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Often the first step is to use software to crop or rotate the image. Most basic image editing software can do these tasks. Cropping is very important as it can reduce storage requirements and can allow improved composition of the image. Good software will allow cropping to specific pixel width and height so that a set of images will align accurately in a document or web page. More powerful software can also quickly adjust brightness, contrast, sharpness or colour balance. It can be used to merge multiple images, apply special filters or to remove unwanted detail by cloning other areas in the image. I have provided some notes about the differences between adapting digital images for print, email and web at http://www.zardec.net.au/keith/adapt.htm Avoid repeated saving of images as jpeg files - image quality is lost each time this is done. Save files being edited in a non-lossy format. When all editing has been completed then save the file (or a copy) at a size, resolution and compression to suit the intended purpose. Recent software (such as Macromedia Fireworks MX and Adobe Image Ready or Photoshop 7) can provide easy and rapid optimization of images for the web. Typically a user can set up multiple views showing the same image in different file formats or with different levels of compression and then choose the most suitable image for use on a web site. File Formats Some serious stuff: Some fun stuff: |
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TOP Quick Start Features Advances Uses Buying Cameras Care Productivity Storage Accessories Special Editing Glossary Resources Credits |
13. Glossary adapter - device to connect additional lens or attach camera to microscope/telescope BMP (bitmap) : uncompressed file format, commonly used in Windows computers CCD (charge coupled device) - array of sensors used to convert image information at a grid of points compression - use of mathematical algorithms to reduce the file sizes of images digital sampling - measuring of original analog image at regular intervals over a grid pattern (each sample becomes a pixel in the final image) digital zoom - use of software to expand or enlarge image (generally lowers quality) downloading - transfer of digital photos from camera down to computer GIF/gif (graphics interchange format) : common file format used for web page images and animations e.g. logo.gif jaggies - commonly seen on high contrast oblique lines (can see a zig-zag line of pixels ) JPEG/jpg (joint picture experts group) : common file format used for digital camera and web page photos e.g. photo.jpg lossy compression - some picture information is removed to make a smaller file size (e.g. jpg) lens - optical device - plastic or glass (better) to focus light, strength indicated by focal length Megapixel (million pixels) - calculated by number of horizontal pixels x vertical pixels MPEG/mpg (motion picture experts group) : common file format used for short video clips OCR - optical character recognition - software that identifies text characters for word processing optical zoom - the focal strength is increased by moving parts of the lens (e.g. 3 x zoom) Panoramas - series of adjoining images stitched together to make a wide or 360 degree scene PC Cards - standard credit card sized device commonly used in laptop computers (also PMCIA) pixel - picture element (a photo is made up of thousands or millions of pixels) PNG/png (portable network graphic) : this file format supports multi-level transparency resolution - measure of the number of pixels (better or higher resolution has more pixels) saturation - measure of intensity of colour (less saturated looks greyer) selective compression - less compression applied in critical areas of image Super CCD - octagonal CCD sensors in offset grid (rather than standard rectangular grid) TIF/tif (tagged interchange file) : uncompressed file format USB (universal serial bus) - allows plug and play connection of devices to a modern computer) Links to more detailed digital camera glossary sites
:-
http://www.steves-digicams.com/digi_dictionary.html (very comprehensive) http://www.dpreview.com/learn/glossary/ http://www.consumerreview.com/resources/dcglossary.asp http://www.quiknet.com/~frcn/definitions.html http://www.guyville.com/gadgets/cams/dcam_glossary.html http://www.megapixel.net/html/issueindex.html (English or French - choose glossary) |
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Good examples on using digital cameras in
education include :-
Teaching ethics in digital photography http://www.doug-johnson.com/ethics Teacher examples http://www.brunswick.k12.me.us/lon/lonlinks/digicam/teacher/home.html Support, curriculum, assessment (includes sample images) http://drscavanaugh.org/digitalcamera/whatdo.htm 1001 Uses http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ucfcasio/qvuses.htm Cameras in the Classroom http://www.surveillance-video.com/cameras-nov-2009.html Some Australian magazines with articles that feature digital cameras include :- Digital Camera Magazine, Digital Photography & Design, Multimedia & Creative Computing, Australian PC User, Australian Personal Computing. Others include Design Graphics (many recent issues), The Australian (Tuesday edition), Australian PC World, etc. Some other useful WWW addresses include
:- |
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TOP Quick Start Features Advances Uses Buying Cameras Care Productivity Storage Accessories Special Editing Glossary Resources Credits |
Many of the comments are aimed at allowing a teacher with ~30 students to help each student get their own images into their own work in one session. It is about educating students. Although it can be helpful to have the latest deluxe model multi Megapixel digital cameras students can learn the process on a lot less. In terms of time taken and resources required the extremely high resolution models can restrict access in a class situation - I believe the first priority is to have all students develop digital imaging skills which they can use to enhance their learning and enjoyment. Please take the trouble to offer ideas or suggestions - you will be acknowledged and others can benefit. The site is intended to be free of bias and receives no commercial gain from any party. Up to 500 people per week currently visit this site - mostly from education but also from government, small businesses and corporations around the world. Please email me some feedback. Portions of this work may be used by others under the fair dealing provisions of the Copyright Act. However the complete site should not be included on another website or in email. Please hyperlink to the current version at http://www.zardec.net.au/keith/digcam.htm or request permission for other situations via email. I started using digital cameras in 1994 with an Apple Quicktake 100 - 640 x 480 pixels - monochrome. I started the site in late 1996. Information is deliberately presented in a very basic table format for faster downloads and to keep my ISP traffic to a minimum - for visual explanations of concepts please see the Helpful Resources section. Any suggestions for a low bandwidth site design that is better than my crummy table based navigation are most welcome. The frivolous lightning bolt graphic was inspired after a glider flight alongside a rain shower under a cloud - I decided to land after a flash of lightning went down the rain alongside my wingtip! This site has included feedback from the following people - Denise Sweetman, Susan Ward, Bryn Jones, Judy Murtha, Bruce Jenkins, Charles Taylor, Sue Scott, Neil Harvey, Jarad Basterfield, Graham Badcock, Mark Rae, Sharon Hayes, Maria Bond, Eric Terrell, Ian Morgan, Laura-Celeste Armstrong, Jan Karger, Sarah White, Colin Terry, Tina Robertson, Richard Kennedy, Shelley Davis, Helen Deacon, Cyril Catt, Pete Candreva and Jill Midolo. I have also received feedback from attendees at my recent visual literacy sessions, at my many Digital Imaging/Creating Web Pages sessions (at QTP seminars, SIDE - School of Isolated and Distance Education, John XXIII College Conferences, West Australian School Library Association Conferences, Clarkson CC, Altone Park, Lockridge SHS and Joondalup Resort) and at my sessions at ECAWA conferences. (hyperlinks are checked and this information
is updated based on feedback, published articles, new experience,
Internet research and new models) |
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