SIGHT IDEAS
These included:
- use of the German Letter James website to create 'trick' images for impact (http://www.letterjames.de)
- discussion on photo editing and manipulation and reasons for doing this
- removing the image / hiding the image / presenting only part of the image e.g. favela juxtaposed with rich areas of the city
- 6 x 6 - an idea for geographical storytelling using small images and 2 dice, developed by Tony Cassidy from an idea of Steve Bowkett, and available from http://www.radicalgeography.co.uk/43.html
- using Picasa to organise images, edit them, and create picture piles on a theme, or contact sheets for image choice - what makes a good image ? encouraging pupils to step outside of the image...
- using Grant Robinson's GOOGLE MONTAGE website to create photo mosaics as starters for particular topics - Val Vannet produced a good series of world biome ones - be cautious that certain words may produce unwanted results ! - save the result using 'print screen'...
http://grant.robinson.name/projects/montage-a-google
- Spot the Difference - an idea developed by David Rayner at his GeoInteractive site: gets the students to look closely at an image, which may result in them seeing something which they hadn't before
- Flickr Tools: the FLAGRANT DISREGARD site (one of my favourite domain names) - this allows you to create excellent results and creative ideas with photos which have been uploaded to the FLICKR photo sharing site by yourself (or others) - http://flagrantdiregard.com/flickr/
- Geo-locate images: using GOOGLE EARTH to locate images in place, or on Anquet / Memory Maps (synchronise map with image)
- http://arje.net/rasterbator - allows for images to be blown up as big as you want - they are printed off as separate A4 pages which can then be re-assembled - could also use this as a classroom activity, where each student is given a small section of an image and has to reproduce it larger, and only sees what the final images was when all the bits are re-assembled (in true 'Rolf Harris' style...)
Some good feedback from the participants - all of them said that they used their own images in their teaching, often spending a lot of their holidays taking pictures for use in the classroom.
Another idea was to use videos with the sound turned off (this idea was included in a recent Curriculum clips programme, where there were 2 sets of the same resource: one with sound and one without...)
One participant had done some action research, and was of the opinion that if lessons started and ended with a photograph which was discussed during the lesson, the students felt that they learned better.