iPhoto in the classroom

Bring learning to life with digital photos

Whether it’s digital photos students take or artwork they create, adding a visual component to classwork is one surefire way to excite and motivate students and deepen their understanding.

iPhoto, which comes with the iLife ’06 suite of digital media applications, provides an incredibly easy tool for students of all ages to import organise, edit and share digital photos. And students can use iPhoto not only with digital photos they take themselves, but also with scanned artwork or photos, images from resource CDs or the Internet or artwork they create in other applications.

“iPhoto is not just about acquiring and editing images but about how easily students and teachers can then use the photos—in slideshows, webpages, books and more.”

 —Karen Thompson, Instructional Technology Facilitator
Lincoln School, Springfield, IL

History students share armed services memories with iPhoto.		Math concepts are brought to life in an iPhoto book.

Students can then readily share the images in their iPhoto libraries in many ways—by creating printed books, webpages, calendars, cards or slideshows or by adding their images to projects created with other applications. They can even print their photos, email them to others, share them with others via the Internet with the new Photocasting feature or save them on a CD or DVD.

Teachers find iPhoto not only a terrific tool for students to communicate what they’ve learned but also an excellent method to assess student understanding and document classroom events.

Enlivens all subjects

Teachers use iPhoto and digital photography to engage students and enhance learning in all subject areas. Students can produce an iPhoto slideshow to document a class science project. Younger students can create photo story books; older students can make poetry books with their own artwork. In math, students can distribute illustrated story problems for the class to solve. In social studies, students can make books and slideshows about local historical sites or biographies of historical figures.

And students can easily use their iPhoto images in their iMovie HD projects or podcasts created in GarageBand or they can add them to reports or presentations created with Pages, Keynote or other software.

Supports collaboration and project-based learning

Digital photography, like other digital media, provides an effective tool for group collaboration and project-based learning for students with all learning styles and skills. Students enthusiastically work together to take photos of a class field trip, the school science fair or a student play and then select and edit the photos for their project and add text and other elements. They're thrilled to share what they've produced with the whole class, the school or their families.

Not just for students

Teachers also find iPhoto an invaluable tool: to create a slideshow for back to school night, portfolios of student work, a visual essay for a new unit of study, webpages to show photos of classroom activities and much more.