Featured image of article: Students Practice Online Communication

Students Practice Online Communication

Students in Mr. Levesque’s Digital Photo I class recently had the opportunity to learn about blogging and to practice online communication skills. The blended learning assignment combined the use of pages and web posts in Blogger.

The assignment consisted of several integrated parts: an artist statement, a photo share page which presents historical photographs from different eras — from Daguerreotypes to modern digital photos —, together with picture descriptions, information about the photographer, as well as brief analyses of the photos and their meaning to the students. The third component integrated student-created photos in blog posts, with reflections on the pictures by the students.

The presentation of the blogs to the members of the class served as an important formative assessment at the midpoint. Students explained as well as contextualized their work and received feedback on their subject matter choices and online communication skills.

Throughout the assignment, students received assistance from Technology Integration Specialist Helfried Zrzavy. He reviewed with the class some of the technical aspects that they would encounter, such as the aspect ratio and size of web-optimized images, as well as the purpose of browser cache files and cookies. Since the blogs are viewable internationally, it was important to quickly review European Union (EU) laws require that Europe-based visitors be given information about cookies that are used on the blog. Special attention was also paid to proper source citations, especially in light of the recently changed Google Image search procedure.