Digital Images in the Language Arts Classroom

Bull, Glen L., and Lynne Bell (eds.) Teaching with Digital Images ISTE, 2005

Chapter 7: Digital Images in the Language Arts Classroom

With the recent discussion in class about copyright and fair use in an educational setting, my mind has been constantly thinking of activities and lessons that could encompass the fair use in the educational setting. How can this be practical on an elementary level? What kind of material is transformationative? Therefore, my gaze went to the Teaching with Digital Images book. Inside there were a variety of chapters on how digital images can be used in science, language arts, social studies, and math. All are just as equally important in the classroom and all can be components that incorporate technology and the issue of copyrighted material. 

I chose the chapter on language arts especially because I love reading and love to teach language arts so it would a useful subject to be able to incorporate digital images. The chapter starts off with a story of a girl in a 7th grade class during a discussion Of Mice and Men who did not participate. She would have rather drawn out images of what the books means and questions about the book. She wanted to see it visually to record her construction of meaning. The chapter goes on to list several reasons how images can help in learning language arts. One is that the digital images can help readers envision text. There is always the debate over which is better the book or the movie but it's true, we love to envision text. Digital images can also offer a unique bridge to writing. Reading an writing go hand in hand and can play off of each other very well in different types of writings. Digital Images also allow students to communicate meaning visually which is where the transformational use of copyright can come into play. 

The rest of the chapter shows potential instructional uses of digital images in a language arts classroom. One was to visualize with a mental movie. This involves strategies such as envisioning the textual world, making and testing predictions, monitoring understanding, asking questions, and making connection. It all goes back to the higher order of thinking of Bloom's Taxonomy. 

Already in my student teaching, I have used digital images to teach in with language arts. For a vocabulary lesson, I had the students decide on how to act out their vocabulary word so I could capture it on camera. The students were very excited about this assignment. But this book also got me thinking to what other ways could I use to incorporate digital images into my teaching. How can I use them to help the students analyze and create and evaluate? Maybe it requires showing a picture as a hook to a lesson that connects with what we are going to learn. Maybe it's giving the students a variety of pictures and they have to come up with the analysis themselves. Never the less, I'm excited to see education in the new eyes of transformation and fair use.