Using a Digital Camera to Increase Tenth Grade Student Interest in the Environment by Documenting Life in a Biosphere

By Kathryn Rice

University of Portland

April 22, 2006

Instructional Design:

In this project, “Ecosystem in a Bottle,” students will create an ecosystem in two-liter soda bottles to which a pollutant will be added. Students will take a picture of their ecosystem every day as well as make observations in their lab books. At the end of the experiment the pictures will be used to determine the earliest point pollution was noticeable by comparing the first picture to the later pictures.

Goals:

s Students will understand the relationships among and between living things and their environment.

s Students will understand and explain how humans and other species can impact an ecosystem.

s Students will practice their scientific inquiry techniques of data collection and analysis with the use of a digital camera for comparison.

Assessment and Evaluation:

Students completed a survey before and after the unit to measure their interest and involvement in environmental issues. The students also completed a pretest and posttest for the unit to indicate the learning gains of the students. Each student used a digital camera every morning during the unit to take pictures of the ecosystem that they created. Each student was required to pass an oral exam prior to using the digital camera within the classroom.

Results:

s Some students’ skills with digital cameras surpassed my own and students found joy in teaching their peers how to use the technology.

s The digital camera was great for capturing images of their ecosystems to refer back to later.

s The students increased their knowledge during the unit.

s The students formed bonds with their ecosystems and wanted to protect them from any type of harm.

s The overall quality of student observations increased during this lab as students began to incorporate more details and measurements into their journals. Looking back on their pictures helped the students realize that more details are needed for stronger analysis.

Suggestions:

1. Look at the length of the project and plan to be finished much sooner than you need to so that there is extra time to wrap up the project should you need it. There are always unforeseen complications that cause projects to be delayed or extended beyond the planned time frame.

2. Check out the computer availability and storage capacity for the students so that they can save their information and work with it on their own account. After I had begun my project, I was informed that students could not save pictures to their account because the school did not have the storage space available.