Link: Apple - iMac - iSight.
Photobooth is an app that comes with newer Macs and is used in conjunction with their built-in iSight cameras. If you click on the above link, you'll see a picture of the kind of computer now in my lab, and the iSight lens is the black square at the top of the screen.
Just about every student that's walked in my lab during the past few weeks has played with Photobooth, and it has drawn raves. I'm starting to think of ideas of how to incorporate this fun, but sort of frivilous, tool into classroom activities. One idea I have is to have each kid in a grade level take their photo using PB and we'll incorporate this pic into our end of their year iMovies. This allows kids to control their own picture and add effects instead of being at the mercy of another kid taking their picture with a digital camera.
During class yesterday, students took a series of photos in Photobooth for their parents and left these in the program's storage area so that their parents could see them during last night's Open House. Then... I had parents find their kids' photos, gave them a few instructions and had them take their own photos for their children. My students will discover these pictures either Friday or Monday, depending on their schedule. This is sort of a remix of a lower school Open House activity where parents leave notes for their children in their desks so that they have something to read the following morning. Instead, we used digital pictures!
I'm also toying with some sort of activity where kids would take a picture using iSight and Photobooth, and then move to the next computer, and take another photo and then keep moving on. It might be a nice way for a group of kids to gather photos of each other for some sort of project, like an advisory group iMovie.
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