The Basics:
Escrapbooking in Teaching and Learning
There are many ways that e-scrapbooks can become educational scrapbooks.
Use them as teaching tool
- practice what you preach & do it yourself
- provide quality examples, models, templates
- use your personal stories to peak interest
As you create your e-scrapbook, consider both the visual aspect and the writing aspect. Some people like to create an area of additional reflection and comments. For example, you might include comments in Word or Speaker Notes in PowerPoint supplement your project. These notes might include memories, citations, additional information.
Read the study The Academic Value of Hands-on Craft Projects in Elementary Schools. This 2001 study shows that student learning improves when classroom lessons incorporate hands-on activities.
Educational and Electronic Scrapbooking
E-scrapbooks can contain a range of electronic elements. Don't think of them as just a book with pages. Scrapbooks can be three dimensional including many types of artifacts. However, they may also contain electronic elements such as digital photos and audio recordings. In some cases technology is used as part of the process for creating fancy text using interesting fonts or locating information on the Internet. Sometimes the final product is a mix of computer-generated and hand-made materials. In other cases, the final product is a photograph or scanned version of a product.
One of the advantages of using technology is the flexibility. For example, the screen below shows a student project from Indiana.
(Indiana student e-diary project based on the Depression. Click visual to enlarge.)
Students used PowerPoint to create a historical fiction diary. Each student developed a character and was required to address specific events, issues, and perspectives of the Depression Era through the use of diary entries. The entries often included news clippings, photographs, editorial cartoons, and other primary source documents.
With PowerPoint it was possible for students to use the Speakernotes to provide background information, answer questions, cite sources, and provide description and depth in addition to the visual area of the scrapbook. The final product included color printouts of the "diary" in addition to a supplement that also included the Speakernotes for each page in black and white. The same approach could be used with a science project tracing each step in an experiment.
Explore
Scrapbooking has been popular for a long time. You'll be able to find lots of examples of personal scrapbooks. However it's time to expand your idea of scrapbooking. Consider ways that you can teach and learn with these scrapbooks.
Explore WebQuests and Lessons with scrapbook products that could be adapted to digital format:
- African-American Biography Scrapbook Project (4th Grade) at Germantown Academy
- Child Labor in America from Library of Congress
- Coal Mining Tour
- Doing the Decades: Group Investigations into Twentieth Century US History from Library of Congress
- DNA – Unity & Diversity of Life
- Figuring Somepin 'Bout the Great Depression: Lesson Four from Library of Congress
- The Great Depression in Your Classroom from Library of Congress
- Geo-generations Scrapbook from Xpeditions
- Graphing Family Trees (PowerPoint)
- Jan Brett's Scandinavian Scrapbooks
- Insect Scrapbook
- Life During the War Between States (Grade 5)
- Literary Scrapbooks Online: An Electronic Reader-Response Project
- Local, State, and National Government
- To Market, To Market from Library of Congress
- Multimedia Millennial Memories
- Nothing Could be Finer, Than to Study South Carolina
- Out of the Dust
- Photojournalism: A Record of War from the Library of Congress
- Physical Education Exercises (PowerPoint)
- Potato Famine in Ireland
- Reconstruction Scrapbook (Grade 8)
- Quebec (Grade 7)
- Stitch a Quilt
- We are all Alike and Different (PowerPoint)
- What Do You See? from Library of Congress
- When Work is Done from Library of Congress
Adapt
There's a chance you may find a lesson or idea that you can adapt for the e-scrapbooking environment. For example, you may find a traditional lesson that would benefit from the rich learning environment of scrapbook creation. You may also find some resources such as Naturescapes Video & Image Starter Resources where you can use photos and videos.
Here are some great places to seek lessons to adapt:
Create
You may wish to create activities and lessons from scratch. Consider ways that you and your students can explore their understandings through authentic resources and "real world" connections.
You'll start with questioning and exploration. Identify, select, annotate, organize, and evaluate artifacts, information, and ideas. Then, polish, publish and share.