). Snap it up! Using Digital Photography in Early Childhood

Citation: Good, L. (Winter 2005). Snap it up! Using digital photography in early childhood. Childhood Education, 82, 2. p.79(7). Retrieved March 19, 2010, from Academic OneFile via Gale:
http://find.galegroup.com/gtx/start.do?prodId=AONE&userGroupName=swu_main
Overview: In this article, many ways to using photography in an early childhood classroom are discussed.
Summary: The article talks about different ways the photographs taken can be used in a classroom setting, with young children. First before you begin using photography, you must get information from the parents because of religious and cultural backgrounds of families and also the preferences of the parents. After permission is obtained, then you must get the children comfortable with using the cameras and the technical aspects of photography. Once you have done these things, you can begin using photography. Some ways that the article suggested that you can use photography is to build a sense of community and belonging, promote feelings of security, build children’s self-esteem, aid in classroom management, communicate with parents, document children’s growth, promote language and literacy, and enhance other areas of the curriculum. To build self esteem, you can take pictures of the achievement that the students accomplish and post their success. To build a sense of community and belonging, can be established by posting pictures of classmates around the classroom, which sends a message of belonging. To promote feelings of security, you can picture of children with their parents sends a message to the children that their parents will return to get them. To use pictures in promoting classroom management, you can incorporate an attendance chart with pictures of the children that the children mount their pictures daily when they arrive. You can also use photos for classroom management to help the children find their learning centers. Using photos to communicate with parents is also important. This can be done by sending picture books home with students of events that are taking place in the classroom to keep parents informed of what happens at school. Another good way to use photography in the classroom is for documenting growth and change. Teachers can take photos of individual children throughout the year to show a change in physical, social, and cognitive growth. Also photos can be used to promote language. When you have photographs of students they are interested to talk about them with the teacher and classmates. And lastly, you can use photographs to explore different curriculum areas. You can have the children take pictures of different in science, social studies, English, and math; and display them when talking about these different subjects throughout the day. Photographs are an excellent way to incorporate technology into an early childhood classroom; the children are interested and can grasp the idea pretty easy.
Reflection: I think this is an excellent article and can be used in so many ways in the classroom. I think that all of these ways to incorporate photos into the classroom are important and the article gives neat ways to do this. I will use this information in my classroom to use photography to involve the students and get them interested in learning. I believe that this can be a very successful thing if teachers just take the time to do these things with their students.