Week 13

Using Google Photos for teaching and learning

Google Photos has many features that we can take advantage of in Education. It is a free photo management system. It is a cloud base application and offers us unlimited storage for high-resolution images. Using this application we can easily upload images and videos through auto-syncing and drag-and-drop interfaces. Once we have the images uploaded, we can manipulate the images, post them to Facebook and Twitter, share a link pointing to the images, create an Album, or tell Stories with them. Google Photos has a smart search that use keywords much like what we do while searching for images in Google search. In Google Photos, the keyword “food” , for example, will return the images of foods, a color keyword like “red”, “green”, or “black”  will come up with images with the respective shade or have the appointed color. Google Photos comes with a photo editor. The edit button will bring a toolbar which lets us do some basic image editing such as cropping the image, adjusting the shade, lights, and colors. Another feature is the image compression. As we are uploading photos to Google Photos, the image size is compressed. Once it has been uploaded, download the photos and we can find that the image sizes are much smaller, almost 80% compression rate.

In the classroom we can make a lot of projects using Google Photos. We can work with K-2 kids  in a photo album to introduce kids to numbers. Here you will assist kids taking the pictures. You give each child a number and ask them to find things that correspond with that number and take a picture of them. For example, if they are assigned the number 3, they may look around the classroom, school, or outside for things that are gathered in 3's. They may find three books together in the library, or three apples in the classroom. Then take a picture of the books or apples. You can then make a Numbers Album in Google Photos with each number being a different page. You would have the child word process the word for the number; the figure for the number, and then insert the pictures. In the same way we can generate other Google Photos o albums to introduce kids with the colors, shapes, etc.

A project for 6-8th graders could be an album-directory in Google Photos of the school's staff and faculty. The teacher will form 3 groups each day to work in 3 different assignments. The idea is to finish the project in five days. If the total number of person in the directory is 20, we are going to work with four person each day. Group 1 is going to take several pictures of each person, and select the best ones of each. Group 2 is going to interview the persons. They are going to compile name, position, main functions and a brief personal message, and Group 3 is going to upload the pictures in Google Photos, and type the info for each person. The next day other 3 different groups is going to work on the same assignments and so on each day until complete the project.

The final idea could be a Google Photos album of a field trip for 3 - 5th grade students. The idea is to create some kind of a field trip digital memory. The teacher take lots of pictures when the class is on a field trip. Back in the classroom, each student can choose 1 picture to work with on Google Photos. The students write a short description of what was happening or why this moment was important.

Jorge Villarreal.