Implications and Teaching Opportunities for Camera Use in Teaching and Learning

"87% of people's smartphones never leave their side." This was stated by Dr. Stange on theClass Blog. Could you see where this would be a problem in schools? I can. If they rarely put their phone down, how can they pay attention to the teacher? The teacher would just be standing up at the front of the classroom wasting her breath if no one was paying attention. The education they are getting would be less than the best, or at least the best their teacher could give. Students have enough trouble paying attention in class, much less if they are on Facebook and Instagram. There will always be those students that would actually be paying attention to the teacher and their education would suffer because the teacher would be focused on the people with phones out.

Think for a second about how many pictures are taken in classes with phones. Pictures in classrooms show up on Snap chat, Instagram, and Facebook all the time. What if there are notes on the board that a professor has copyrights to? What happens if that just so happens to be in the background of you picture? There are times when cameras come in handy, but not in a classroom when your full attention needs to be on your education. Not to mention that you could get in big trouble for those copyrighted notes.

On the flip side, I can see where having technology in the classroom would be helpful at times. There is an app on iPhones that the kids can download. They pick the answer to the question the teacher reads. The results come up on the board as a percentage of the class for each answer. I love to see students recording themselves for their own good. I think that students could reenact important scenes in history, and then collaborate with the whole class and use those movies in a time line. I loved the book trailer we completed in class. I thought it was a lot of fun. Kids could record parts of the story and then the whole class could put the parts together to make a whole. Even come up with their own story as they go along.