Student Photographs

Because digital cameras are now within the budgets of most schools and some families, the school (or group of schools) may draw up a plan to develop a rich archive of photographs to support the curriculum. These photographs can be stored on the school file server or displayed through the school Web site. Instead of the sad handful of animals displayed above, then, the school might offer hundreds of pictures of cats, dogs, tigers and panthers.

Organizing this collection so that students can find just the right picture to "do the trick" will require that someone invest in the writing and storing of "meta tags" - keywords listed in the database that will help with selection. Students should be able to find the angry tabby cat glaring at the pug nose dog from the kitchen window.

An excellent example would be the use of keyword searching for the Image Database at The Thinker - the online museum of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco at http://www.thinker.org/fam/thinker.html The designers call the meta tags "word soup."

Extensis is one company making excellent software to support catalog creation by graphic artists. An explanation of their product, Portfolio, is available at http://www.extensis.com/portfolio/PortfolioSpotlightKeister.html

For decades school libraries have used metadata to help catalog books with the use of MARC records, but now we will begin seeing the cataloging by schools of digital images and data.

For an extensive treatment of this challenge on a higher ed level, review the resources available in "DIGITAL LIBRARIES: Cataloguing and Indexing of Electronic Resources" from the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. http://www.ifla.org/II/catalog.htm

Much as I would like to point the reader to outstanding examples of this strategy at the K-12 level, I was unable to find any models of schools using their file servers, intranets or Web sites as photographic archives to support student writing, reporting and communicating. Instead I found galleries of student art and photography with outstanding work displayed. A gallery, while valuable, is quite different from a comprehensive archive offering an impressive menu of images. One visits a gallery. One uses an archive.

I also found excellent Web pages at schools directing students to external image collections. An example: Oswego City Schools http://oswego.org/ocsd-web/tech/multimedia.htm.

The Education Department in Tasmania offered a course called "Managing Computing Resources in Education" that outlined the skills and tasks involved in creating a robust network and intranet.

Student Drawings

Those who plan the vertical file begin by taking a look at the topical areas covered by the school's curriculum and place a high priority on the collection of images to support those topics. In addition to the photographs mentioned earlier, student drawings are encouraged to round out the collection.

While most student work tends to leave school for the refrigerator door at home, this electronic online collection offers students a new form of publishing and a new level of recognition.

When making a list of categories to drive the menu of the collection, why not take a hint from the clip art companies. In Corel's "Incredible Image Pak" the following "libraries" are listed:

3D Aircraft Animal Arrow Bird Business Celebration Child Communication Computer Crest Crustaceans Design Electronics Fantasy

Fire Fish Flag Food Holiday Home Insect Insignia Justice Landmark Leisure Man Map Medical Miscellaneous

Money Music People Plant Portrait Reptile Ship Sign Simple Border Space Sports Theme Border Tools Vehicle Weapon Weather Woman

ArtsEdge, a project launched by the Kennedy Center, provides substantial teacher resources to support the integration of the arts throughout the curriculum at (http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/teaching_materials/artsedge.html).

Student Paintings

Student paintings can be completed in water color or other media and then scanned into digital formats.

For a rich list of student galleries go to http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/links/kid_galleries.html.

While these student paintings are organized by topical galleries, they illustrate the beauty and the power of student art work when collected and published. It is a big step from display in a gallery to organization in an archive accompanied by permission for use by other students.

Survey Data

Illinois Standard 18.B.5 Use methods of social science inquiry (pose questions, collect and analyze data, make and support conclusions with evidence, report findings) to study the development and functions of social systems and report conclusions to a larger audience.

Social studies teachers often ask students to collect and analyze survey data as a way of showing them the power of new technologies to crunch numbers. Unfortunately, many of these studies are simply discarded at the end of the exercise. It makes much better sense to develop an online collection of data studies so that students in future years can compare and contrast the responses. This collecting of data over time supports trend analysis. "How have opinions changed?"

Judi Harris offers a list of Information Collection and Analysis project sites at http://virtual-architecture.wm.edu/Telecollaboration/index.html

An excellent list of external data resources can be found courtesy of the Liberal Arts Computer Lab of the University of Texas at Austin at (http://www.la.utexas.edu/research/sls/data.html).

Oral Histories

Students can record interviews with local citizens who have played a part in the development of the town and country. These interviews can then be posted on the school Web site or file servers as digital resources that serve to bring history to life for future generations of students.

Outstanding examples:

• We Made Do - Recalling the Great Depression
  Oral History from the students of Mooresville High School in Indiana
  
• The Bland County History Archives
  Projects from Rocky Gap High School in Rocky Gap, Virginia

These examples were found thanks to a more extensive listing provided by the Alief Independent School District.

Local Political Data

Local elections and political events produce substantial data sets that can be stored on school Web sites and file servers to support student inquiry in future years. The day after an election, the papers are often filled with data that students can scoop up and archive for future generations to enjoy.

Local Science Data

Good science teachers have been sending students out to collect data for decades. Sometimes it is water quality data. Perhaps classes are checking out the region in terms of acid rain conditions and effects.

Where does the data end up when the unit is finished? In a file cabinet? In a trash can?

It should be published on the Web or shared through district file servers as the following projects have aptly demonstrated . . .

• Water What-ifs - "was created for the purpose of encouraging inquiry investigations of water quality and collaboration between teachers and students. This site was designed to be a teaching and learning tool for teachers as well as students." North Carolina and Delaware. (http://www.ncsu.edu/sciencejunction/depot/experiments/water/index.html)

Local History Artifacts

Schools can create partnerships with local museums and historical societies to engage students in collecting, studying and displaying local artifacts on a Web site as a virtual museum.

Many examples are listed at Oldies and Goodies: The School Museum List and Site (http://fno.org/museum/oldies&goodies.html)

Local History Photographs

In conjunction with search for artifacts mentioned above, community study might also involve the collection and display of historically interesting photographs.

For one impressive example, visit Focus on Your Community - "part of the Community in History Project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities in collaboration with Rice University's Center for Technology in Teaching and Learning; Hogg Middle School and the Texas State Historical Association." (http://community.rice.edu/focusresources/)

CD-ROM Collections

Most networked schools quickly learn to buy some solid, professional developed reference materials like digital encyclopedias and data collections to serve across the system either as CD-ROMs or as files copied to the file servers. These would require the purchase of a site license, of course.

The reasoning behind this strategy is presented along with examples in an article that first appeared in eSchool News "No Free Lunch on the Internet" at (http://fno.org/jan2000/freelunch.html).

Image Subscriptions

Given the poor quality of clip art available, many schools are exploring payment for image collections that may offer more soul and more communication power. An example would be ArtToday (http://www.arttoday.com/) a subscription service for photographs and other types of images.

Free Web Images

There are many free online image collections that students may use, but it takes some care to identify them and learn their rules. It is important that students understand that the rules governing their use of images differs as soon as they have left the classroom. This shift would cover publishing on a Web site, for example. "Fair use" applied to classroom usage, not international publishing.

Springfield High School librarian Joyce Valenza has created an excellent list of what she calls "copyright friednly" collections of images at http://mciunix.mciu.k12.pa.us/%7espjvweb/cfimages.html Her "virtual library" is an excellent example of how to guide students and staff toward reliable resources. http://mciu.org/~spjvweb/

But finding an image is just the beginning. The next step requires some research to learn whether or not the site is willing to share the image for use outside the classroom.

If they say they don't mind if you take and republish the image, it is also important to determine if they actually have the rights to share the image.