Practical Ed Tech Tip of the Week – Taking Better Pictures With Mobile Phones

ByRichard Byrne

The best way for students to avoid any copyright issues when creating slideshows or other multimedia presentations is to use images they’ve taken themselves. Another good option is pull images from a classroom gallery that everyone has contributed to for the purpose of sharing and re-using with classmates. You and your students could build such a gallery in a shared Google Drive folder, a shared Dropbox folder, or a shared Flickr pool. You and your students can share pictures directly from your mobile phones to these folders through the respective iOS and Android apps available for each service.

Instagram, Aviary, and a slew of other apps have made it possible to crop and add all kinds of interesting effects to our pictures. But one editing tip that we often overlook is simply thinking about how we hold our phones when we’re taking pictures. Before you take a picture think about how you’re currently viewing a scene and how you want others to view it when they see your picture. For example, in the first picture below I initially held my phone in landscape mode because I wanted to feature not only Big Ben, but also the river and the bridge. In the second picture below I wanted to emphasize the ski lift line so I held my phone in portrait mode.

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This weekend I opened registration for the Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp. If you’re looking for a summer  professional development opportunity in a picturesque setting, please take a look at the registration page.