Does your classroom have digital cameras, computers, printers, and access to the Internet? Then you're set to have your students "go digital" - shoot, edit, organize, and share digital photos - as they create information about the subject matter they study. From digital storytelling to powerful presentations, students learn better when they create as they learn, which is an aspect of 21^st century learning. What are the steps you need to know? Follow this tried and true organization, and you'll have it all under control.

Digital Workflow

Digital photography lets you take great photos the very first time you or your students try. You can send your pictures anywhere in the world and keep them forever. Taking pictures is easier than ever. Or is it?

Of course, the more pictures you take, the harder it is to organize them. The more pictures you have, the harder it is to find the exact one you want to print. There's something called "workflow" that makes digital photography fun and easy. But what is workflow? And why do you need it?

You have a workflow to get through the day. That may sound strange, but a workflow is just a series of steps that helps you finish a task. A good workflow gets you what you want, and it saves time, too.

Organization

When you wake up in the morning, you get out of bed. Before you take a shower, you turn on the water and let it warm up. Once you're in, you pop open the shampoo bottle and wash your hair. That's a workflow that helps you look clean and ready for the day.

Digital photography has certain elements that help you create a great picture. To get the most out of your digital camera, you need to develop a consistent workflow.

A good digital workflow doesn't get in the way of your creativity or limit your enjoyment of digital photography. Instead, workflow makes it better.

Four Steps to Success

• Take pictures
• Organize them
• Edit pictures
• Print and share
  

The first two - take pictures and organize them - are the most important. If you pay attention when you shoot digital photos and then sort and store them with care, the next two steps - editing pictures and then printing and sharing them - are much easier.

Take Photos

One of the great things about taking pictures is that if it looks great, chances are it's going to make a great photo. Remember to take more than one picture of the same subject by changing your angle of view. You could kneel down on the ground and take a picture from a lower angel. Or you could stand on a chair and shoot the picture from above. Or move to the left or right. Or.... Well, you get the picture.

Think about how the picture looks through the camera's viewfinder or LCD screen. It's called "composition." There is the "rule of thirds" that helps you figure out where the focus of the photo should be. If you're taking a picture of a landscape, think about showing more sky than land. Or you can do the reverse. The best pictures of people are taken close up instead of far away. And be careful not to ruin a photo by having trees or telephone poles sticking out of people's heads.

Organize Photos

After you have taken pictures with your digital camera you will want to transfer them to your computer, organize them, and put them on a CD or website. Here are some tips to help you organize your pictures.

With Adobe® Photoshop® Elements, you can connect your camera or card-reader to your computer and import images directly into the software. You can also use a scanner to bring printed photographs into your computer, and images you can import other photos that you have stored on your computer.

The second step is to find the photos you want. Digital cameras make photography easy and affordable, so it is very common to end up with a lot of pictures. Having many pictures requires a good software tool for keeping them organized so you can find them later on.

Photoshop Elements allows you to view all of your photos in one place, organized by the date they were taken or by tags that you create - such as "Science Fair" or "New York Trip." This method is far easier than renaming every picture, creating folders, and manually putting images into the folders. It also makes it much easier to find them later. To tag a photo, simply drag the appropriate tag on top of the photo and you're done! You can view your images as thumbnails and find them quickly based on a timeline or the tags you assigned.

Edit Photos

As much fun as you had taking pictures, editing adds the little extra something that makes digital so cool.

To unleash your inner artist, use Adobe® Photoshop® Elements software. Anything's possible. You can make a color photo look black and white. Remove red eye. Create greeting cards. Run a slide show. Stitch together a panorama photo. Or twist, twirl and liquefy photos. You can even make a background for web pages and create web photo galleries.

Editing Basics

No matter what you want the picture to look like, there are some basic steps you should take:

• Open a copy of the original.
• Crop the photo - find the best part of the picture and delete the extra parts that you don't want by cropping.
• Adjust the tone - if it's too dark, lighten it up. If it's too light, you can make the photo darker.
• Balance color - are your reds really red? Are the greens the way you remember? Color balancing can make a photo really pop.
• Remove red eye.
• Resize the picture. If you've taken a photo in a high-res format, the picture is probably bigger than you want to print. Resize the photo and you can have the print size you want.
  

Share Photos

Digital photography offers a bunch of new ways to share photos. You can post pictures to a website or create a CD for friends. Emailing photos is fast and easy too. Giving a slide show adds real value to a school project. Since your photos are most likely saved in different folders, think about creating a special folder for the photos you want to share.

Here are some ways to share your photos:

• Publish your photos on a web page. There isn't a better way to share your photos than on the web.
• Write your favorite photos to a CD. A CD can hold hundreds of high-resolution pictures.
• Email photos. Unless someone needs high-resolution photos for printing, send low-resolution photos by e-mail.
• Resize pictures before emailing. Always resize a copy of your photo. Once you make it smaller for emailing, you can't make it bigger again.
• Give a slide show. Use Adobe Photoshop Elements to show off your favorite photos in a Portable Document Format (PDF) slide show. Anyone can see the slide show using the free Adobe Reader®.
• Upload pictures to an online printing service. If you don't feel like printing your photos, upload them to an online photo printing service and you can have prints delivered to your door.
  

Any classroom with the right tools - digital cameras, computers, printers, access to the Internet, and Adobe Photoshop Elements - can provide 21^st century learning opportunities for students.

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