February 2005 — Features
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Increasing Visual Literacy Skills With Digital Imagery
The cart we chose is a bit too upright, making it somewhat susceptible to tipping over.
The wheels/rollers on the cart are too small, so if the cart is only going to be transported over carpeted or tiled hallways, wheels of this type are adequate. However, if you have to transport the cart between buildings over rougher surfaces, such as we do at ASU West, the cart d'es not roll smoothly. If this is the case, we recommend you choose a model with larger wheels.
While this Sony camera model takes good movie images, there is no built-in device to record sound and no port for audio input. If you want to capture sound along with your movies, make sure the cameras you buy have that capability.
Make sure your users understand the settings relating to image size. On the Mavica MVC-FD200, if you set the image size to the highest resolution (1,600 x 1,200 pixels), you get sharp looking digital photos. However, you will only be able to fit about four pictures on a floppy disk at this size. On the other hand, if you set the image size to the lowest setting (640 x 480 pixels), you can generally get 25 or more pictures on a disk. We have found that unless there is a need for the image to be particularly sharp, the pictures taken at the lowest setting are generally clear enough for our purposes.
As noted above, keeping batteries charged is an important aspect of making the camera set easy to use. Batteries can be purchased with a variety of charge lengths the longer the battery life, the higher the cost. At ASU West, 100 minutes or so of battery life is fine; our camera set is seldom used more than two class periods back to back. However, your institution may have a need for additional battery life if students take the cameras on an all-day field trip. Bear in mind that most rechargeable batteries do not stay charged for great lengths of time, even if the devices they power are not in use. If our Sony cameras are not plugged in, the batteries tend to discharge within a week.
Setting up a process for erasing the media when the cameras are returned is also important. Many instructors provide their own disks or have their students bring disks to use with the camera. However, we do keep about 20 disks in the cart at all times. If a teacher chooses to use those disks, we don t want pictures from previous classes to be on them for many reasons. First, those pictures are taking up space on the disks, reducing the number of pictures that can be taken. Second, pictures left on the disks by previous classes can be very confusing to the current users as they attempt to download and view the pictures they have taken.
Conclusion
Overall, our first year of implementing the digital camera cart has been relatively problem-free. So far, in a full year of use, we have had no mechanical problems with any of the cameras; the pictures have been easy to import on both platforms. We have managed to build a modest set of examples of how this technology can be integrated into classes in the college. We also anticipate that usage of the cart will increase as we share these examples with our instructors. More important, we hope when our preservice teachers have K-12 classrooms of their own, they will start e-mailing us new and innovative examples of their students’ work.
References
Cooper, J. 2003. Classroom Teaching Skills. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Pastor, E., E. Kerns, and P. Reddy. 1997. “A Digital Snapshot of an Early Childhood Classroom.” Educational Leadership (54) 3: 42-45.
Roblyer, M. and J. Edwards. 2000. Integrating Educational Technology Into Teaching. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.
Online Resources
• Going Digital in the Classroom
www.forsyth.k12.ga.us/sbeck/digital/goingdigital.htm
• 1001 Uses for a Digital Camera
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ucfcasio/qvuses.htm
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