Rural Low-Income Jr. High Art Techies with Digital Camera
My students need six digital cameras and 6 memory cards to create digital portfolios for assessment, and to capture family and community images for artwork in art class.
In this day of technology, our little low-income rural art program has one huge gap: no way to capture images. It's common practice for each student to create digital portfolios, with reflective analysis, for artwork, as well as to use personal imagery for art, but we've never had cameras.
We live in a small, low-income rural community mostly based on coal mining and related services.
Our school is almost 90% free or reduced lunch students. We serve a multi-cultural population, including Native American and Latino students. We have a decent computer lab here at our little junior high, and I'm having our tech people install a good free graphics program (GIMP), but we don't have cameras. There are so many interesting images in our community, an old mining town, which we could go out and photograph and come back to use for source in our artwork. My students' artwork is usually so amazing! We work patiently and well, and we often win statewide contests for our grade levels. It is so valuable to document and reflect on our work, encouraging writing skills and cross-curricular instruction. Perhaps even more important will be documenting their art processes and work using digital portfolios, which are now standard practice in many schools across the nation.
My Project
Of course, six cameras mean that we will share, but I've got that all figured out, with a secure Picasa site. We'll go out walking for in-school field trips (one of the great benefits of living in rural Utah is that it is very safe) and take photos. When we get back, we'll go to the computer lab and upload the photos to the Picasa site, and then students will take their own images and use them to learn basic digital image processing and graphic design. We will also print them out and use them as source for drawings and paintings. This will help students learn to share and cooperate, but even more, it will given them a strong artistic connection to their communities.
DonorsChoose has changed our lives!
Our projects have depth and maturity because of the great help we've received from you, and we are beyond grateful. These cameras will add a new and essential component to our art program. I'll lock them up in my secure storage room, and they'll serve kids for years to come!
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