Using Digital Images in Projects
Although readers may sufficiently understand some stories and data lists by just reading them, writers can often help their audiences better and more quickly understand a story or concept if they include photos or images. Working with images is also a nonlinguistic representation that often leads to deeper understanding of a topic. These representations include using whole-body movement, building, drawing, singing, woodworking, coding, and more. So much of the work we do in schools is focused on developing language skills, but it is important that high school students also learn how to craft a clear message using a combination of images. The Toledo Museum of Art (n.d.) highlights the importance of studying visual language:
In an increasingly digital world we’re communicating more with images and less with words. Images are superseding words as our primary form of communication. On Instagram alone, 20 billion photos have been uploaded since 2010. Many of us employ visual language, often without realizing it. Being fluent in the language of images gives us an advantage at school, at work, and at home.
Leading researchers, educators, museum professionals, filmmakers, and artists believe that being fluent in visual language can improve one’s creativity, critical thinking, educational achievement, empathy towards others and the ability to decipher technology.
Grades 9–12 students have experience snapping and sending images to friends outside of school, but to be fluent using visual language, they need to use those skills to create a clear message that demonstrates what they know and can do in the classroom. For that reason, we have included this NOW lesson set so you can help your students better find images, create their own images, and enhance images for their projects in ways that display their understanding of a topic.
Novice: Explaining Ideas With Images
Learning goal:
I can use a combination of images to enhance others’ learning and understanding.
By the time students enter high school, they have consumed media in many multimedia formats including video games, television, and online streaming video. For this lesson, students will use that background knowledge to create sophisticated projects telling their own message through imagery. This lesson has students search for digital images and use them in projects to more clearly explain ideas so that readers better understand them. For example, when writing a report about an element on the periodic table, a student in science class might use images to help illustrate the information they gathered during their research. When students can use appropriate images to display their understanding of material, they deepen their understanding of that material.
In addition to helping you teach students how to enhance their learning with images, this lesson also gives you a good opportunity to enforce with students the importance of respecting copyright. Google Images (https://images.google.com), for example, includes a Usage Rights filter under its Tools menu that allows students to locate images that are free for use under Creative Commons (https://creativecommons.org), a global nonprofit organization that offers copyright-licensing tools. (We talk more about copyright in chapter 5, page 120.) In addition to Google Images, Flickr (www.flickr.com), Pixabay (https://pixabay.com), Freerange Stock (https://freerangestock.com), and Pexels (www.pexels.com) all offer access to copyright-free images students can use in their projects. Flickr is a particularly great resource because it doesn’t require students to have an account to access images.
Process: Finding Images
Use the following four steps to teach students how to locate and download images.
1. After completing a unit, assign student groups one of the unit topics and have them create a multimedia review of the content using just digital images, not text. The entire class will use the products each group creates as review material before the summative assessment.
2. Have students conduct a search for free-to-use images applicable to their project. They should select images they want to use and save them to their device.
3. Provide time for students to add the images they found to their project. Remind each group that other groups will use what they create to prepare for the final assessment. Stress the importance of accuracy in their fact finding and image selection, keeping the focus on the content, but also adding a creative approach to the project.
4. When groups complete their guide, have them share it with other members of the class using the classroom LMS. Both you and your students should provide feedback to the groups as they view projects as a whole group.
Connections
You can apply this lesson to different content areas in the following suggested ways.
TEACHING TIPS
• English language arts: Have students read a two- to three-page short story that has no images. Students can find images that would help other readers better understand the story and that could possibly offer additional layers to the story for readers to consider.
• Mathematics: Students can read an explanation of what it means if a quadratic function has no real solution, one real solution, or two real solutions. Have students search for and submit example images of graphed quadratic functions that fit these criteria. You can also have students submit images that display the standard form of a quadratic function, that depict the discriminant of a quadratic function, and so on.
• Social science: After discussing an article describing the U.S. Civil Rights movement, students can find and submit images that enhance the article’s viewpoint. To find a useful article, use a library database such as MasterFILE Premier (www.ebsco.com/products/research-databases/masterfile-premier) or ERIC (https://eric.ed.gov).
• Art: Have students choose an artist, review their full body of work, and make a connection to whether that artist had a growth mindset or fixed mindset. The images students select should reflect the history of the artist and their mindset.
• Career and technical education: In an early-childhood-education class, have students create an age-appropriate lesson for prospective students that uses images to help them understand a concept like shapes or colors.
Operational: Creating Original Images