 "Through projects like Look Again, ArtsBridge's aim is to extend arts awareness and appreciation, and to foster arts skills in young people beyond the confines of school. It was wonderful to see the project be so successful and have the ease-of-use of the HP PhotoSmart 320 cameras encourage many of the students to continue an interest in photography - even to take up an active interest in photojournalism."
-- Morgan Appel
Research Specialist, Da Vinci Research Center for Learning Through the Arts, University of California, Irvine |
The da Vinci Research Center for Learning Through the Arts, established at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) in 2001, builds on the expertise of faculty in the Arts disciplines, Education, Social Ecology and Medicine to study the many different relationships between arts education, aspects of cognitive and social development, civic engagement, and public policy information.
ArtsBridge America offers, at each local level, classes, workshops, performances, and other interactive artistic experiences to young people from kindergarten through the 12th grade. The program philosophy is that the arts are best conveyed through interactive hands-on experience. Selected students are paired with teachers to collaboratively use new projects to develop proficiency in art forms as well as teaching the arts in a cross-curricula way.
Needing tough, sophisticated cameras
The creator of the project, Education professor Robert Beck explained, "One example of an interactive hands-on experience is the "Look Again" project in which elementary and middle school students are given a list of highly evocative vocabulary words, such as "mysterious," "parallel," "amorphous," "complex," "community," "peace," and "symmetry." The pupils are outfitted with cameras and invited to capture and interpret these concepts as visual images as a means to engage complex vocabulary and to promote literacy development."
One of the primary objectives of Look Again is to use photography to augment students' vocabulary word knowledge. Word knowledge refers to being able to provide verbal definitions of words, to understand multiple meanings of words, and to visualize "doing things with words." At the same time, instruction in the art of photography develops the students' skills in perception, composition, and expression. The combined approach creates a reciprocal relationship between word knowledge, visual and photographic skills, deepening the students' understanding of the differing powers of images and words to capture and convey meaning.
Beck said, "Pupils are encouraged to look for multiple meanings and contextual uses of vocabulary terms through their digital photographs, and to explore these meanings and perceptions with other students, teachers, and university scholars through creative writing assignments, culminating in a multimedia presentation and discussion of their work at the Beall Center on campus at UCI."
He continued, "The intent was to bring photography and vocabulary in to the classroom in a reciprocal way. We did the latest Look Again project with a class of fourth graders and two classes of seventh graders, working simultaneously. We assessed their articulation of the image, and how well the image represented specific vocabulary words. We developed an award system based on invention and innovation by measuring how many vocabulary words a pupil could capture in just one image."
The right solution and support from HP
Morgan Appel, Research Specialist with The da Vinci Research Center for Learning Through the Arts elaborated, "Based on the experience with earlier Look Again projects, we wanted to make sure that the images were finely honed in order to display them in a variety of ways. In addition, for download speed and flexibility, it made sense to move from using disposable cameras to digital ones."
Appel needed the digital cameras to be resilient, easy for pupils to manipulate, cost effective and able to produce spectacular images. He noted, "One of my criteria was to select a camera capable of interfacing with a variety of technologies because schools have all sorts of legacy equipment and we wanted to construct an environment where technical challenges were minimized."
Appel undertook a comprehensive evaluation of every model of camera in the project's budget. "The HP PhotoSmart 320 digital camera proved to be amazing. It comes with the memory capacity we estimated would be needed and has the option to add more memory cards if we choose to. What really caught our attention is the capability for the kids to capture a movie of around a minute long if they decide to use motion to illustrate a particular word."
ArtsBridge initially ordered 40 HP PhotoSmart 320 cameras. Appel recalled, "We were concerned that some of the students might be off put by too much complexity, but when we received the cameras we were very impressed with how really easy they are to use."
Appel's enthusiasm for the HP PhotoSmart 320 camera's role in the Look Again project was quickly noticed by HP staff, and HP soon offered its sponsorship. He noted, "HP has been a fantastic supporter of this project. Not only did it provide us with additional cameras for the pupils, it included some ancillary equipment, such as chargers, memory cards and batteries. We had a wonderful surprise: HP even donated prizes of HP PhotoSmart 720 cameras for the award winners at the project culmination event in our Beall gallery. This added incentive to engage fully in the project really motivated the pupils."
With each student working on 25-50 vocabulary words, and with three classes of students sharing the cameras, the extra memory cards became essential. "We didn't want the students to take just one picture per vocabulary word, we wanted them to take many images for each word in order to broaden the subsequent class discussions," noted Appel.
Inspiring images
The Look Again project guidelines asked the students to capture images, not just in their school environment, but in the community at large, and at home. Appel explained, "The kids had the cameras with them at all times. We knew that accidents do happen, especially in the fourth grade. We didn't want the pupils to feel afraid to use them, and we wanted to make sure that even if the cameras had a lot of handling they would continue to function. It is a real testimony to the durability of these cameras that they all survived without problems: I even accidentally dropped one and it still works! It is the perfect camera for young children to use because it's not an overly delicate piece of equipment. We gave it 100+% marks for robustness!"
Students were able to execute the project themselves, from choosing the subject, to capturing it digitally, uploading it to a computer, placing the image in context and writing around it.
"We found that the HP cameras had a wonderful interface with any computer, be it a PC or a Mac, networked or standalone. The pupils were able to simply hook up the camera to their workstation and download a full memory card of photographs at once. The process was so fast they could broadcast the images to the whole class immediately. This 'real-time' ability to display an image and discuss the applicability against a particular vocabulary word gave us an incredible synergy that we could not have achieved with another camera," observed Appel.
As the photos were going to be displayed as posters, the images were captured at the highest resolution possible, which permitted them to be enlarged to as big as 10" x 25". "Our judges were simply amazed the images rival those seen in art galleries," Appel enthused.
He concluded, "Through projects like Look Again, ArtsBridge's aim is to extend arts awareness and appreciation, and to foster arts skills in young people beyond the confines of school. It was wonderful to see the project be so successful and have the ease-of-use of the HP PhotoSmart 320 cameras encourage many of the students to continue an interest in photography - even to take up an active interest in photojournalism."
At a glance
- Organization: ArtsBridge America
- Headquarters: University of California, Irvine, Claire Trevor School of the Arts
- Telephone: (949) 824-8972
- URL: ArtsBridge website
- Primary focus: providing scholarships to qualified students, graduate and undergraduate, to teach the arts and conduct arts-related workshops in art, dance, drama, music, and digital arts to surrounding communities.
Challenge
- Finding digital camera technology, to support the outreach goals of the Look Again program, capable of:
- Capturing finely honed images to be displayed in a variety of ways.
- Fast digital image download speeds to meet class time requirements.
- Flexibility in image capture to foster artistic creativity.
- Being durable enough to withstand students' treatment.
- Ease-of-use for pupils to manipulate.
- Meeting budgetary restraints.
- Interfacing with a variety of technologies.
- Fostering enthusiasm for photography an arts beyond the Look Again experience.
Solution
- 40 HP PhotoSmart 320 digital camera.
- HP Sponsorship for the Look Again program and awards ceremony, including donations of accessories for the HP PhotoSmart 320 digital cameras and complete HP PhotoSmart 720 digital cameras as prizes.
Results
- All 40 HP PhotoSmart cameras survived the Look Again project with no problems.
- High image quality facilitating enlargement to 10" x 25" for display purposes.
- A real-time ability to display an image in the classroom and discuss the applicability against a particular vocabulary word.
- The cameras enabled the Look Again project to tap into different modalities of learning.
- The ease-of-use of the HP PhotoSmart 320 cameras encourage many of the students to continue an interest in photography.
For more information on how working with HP can benefit you, contact your local HP service representative.
2003 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
The information contained herein is subject to change without notice.
5982-2199EN, 10/2003 |
|
 |
Additional information |
|
|
|
Industry
Products
Solutions
|
|
|
|
|
Verzia pre tlač
