What Students Do With All Their Photos

I just read a blog post by @shareski What Are You Doing With All Your Photos? and it got me thinking.  I am teaching a 7th/8th grade Beginning Photography class this year for the first time.  According to some, it will be really easy.  Have the students take a bunch of pictures with their phones, upload them to Instragram, add some formatting, and Voilà, done with planning for the year!  

That sounded pretty good, but I decided to come up with a few other activities to do just in case I needed some backup.  One of the lessons I am doing with my students is similar to what Dean mentioned in his blog.  My students are going to take a picture a day, with one wrinkle, it needs to be a self-portrait.  It can be anywhere, at anytime, with anyone or anything.  The only requirement is that they take the picture.

Each week, students will choose one of the pictures they took and write about it. Students can write about whatever they would like.  Some of the prompts could be:

• What they were doing?
• What they were thinking?
• How they were feeling?
• A story about the person, place, or thing in their picture.
• Or anything else they want to write about.

At the end of the year, they will choose one picture from each week, and create a collage, slideshow, video, etc. using the pictures.  This creation will serve as a photographic timeline of their year!