Photo Booth Ideas
students take wacky pictures of themselves with Photo Booth, then she had them
write stories about how they came to look like they did in their pictures. I thought
that was a really fun idea and the students came up with some great stories.
The following are just a few ideas on how to use Photo Booth in the
classroom:
• Reading Improvement/Assessment- Make a movie of your students as they read out loud. Do this a
couple time through out the year. Videos show how their reading has improved through out the year.
• Teaching Symmetry- Use the mirror effect to show symmetry.
• Student Newscast/Daily Announcements- Students can use video to create daily announcements or a
special newscast. Use a photo of the school as the background.
• Make a how to video- Make a short video reinforcing concepts learned in class. Post them on a class web
page to be used as
homework help.
• Help get to know student’s name and face- Take a picture of each student and create a class directory or
seating chart.
• Video Blog- Create a video blog of what was talked about in class.
• Book Review/Report for project- Allow students to use the video to do a book review or report.
Use an image as a background - not hard to do - and explain the significance - or create a riddle relating to
the image. IE - This famous american was born in 1851 in Springfield, IL ..." see example below:
Origninal Source: http://www.uen.org/ucet/downloads/Photobooth.pdf
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Learning tool- videos to practice a speech/presentation or poem.
Photo Booth can be used for a multitude of projects throughout the school year. My favorite project for
using Photo Booth is for character education development. I create a “How are you feeling today?” grid
in Pages or Word and save as a template. Students take pictures of themselves displaying the different
emotions and drag and drop onto the template. When they are finished we print them out and create a class
book of emotions. This is a wonderful way to teach students empathy. Photo Booth can also be used at the
beginning of the year for a getting-to-know you project. Create a bulletin board with student pictures.
Students could use Photo Booth to star in their own stories. Teachers, take pictures of students
throughout the year as you podcast students reading. The photos with the podcasts make an excellent end of
the year gift for students and parents as they can see and hear students growth throughout the year. Create a
classroom “dictionary” where students create definitions for themselves along with their pictures. When
teaching action verbs, have students take pictures of themselves actually doing an action verb. You will
find a hundred and one uses that you never expected when you bring a web cam into the classroom and pair
it with Photo Booth
Tips: See the image below for an example of the “How are you feeling today?” templates I created in
Pages. One template was created for kindergarten through second grades and the second template was
created for third through fifth grades.
TIP from http://blogs.ksbe.edu/ets/2008/06/09/photo-booth/:
Need to take a quick Photo Booth picture without the 3-second delay? Hit OPTION while clicking the shutter
button below the picture. Voila!
Video Story Problems
This is probably the easiest way to use Photo Booth, and requires the least amount of prep and/or technical
skill. If you can find Photo Booth in your applications folder, or on your dock, then you can do this in less
than 5 minutes. Just find a few good visual props (food works well), or find a place to video that’s authentic
(like your living room), to engage the students a bit more. You don’t have to be perfect, and if you keep the
problem short enough, even if you mess up terribly you can always get a couple of takes in under 5
minutes. Once you’re done recoding you’re all set! You can just bring up Photo Booth when you get to
school, and play back the video problem, or find the video in your Movies folder.
Even better, you can have your students come up with their own video story problems while at school, thus
reducing your investment of time even less. It takes about 2 minutes to show students how to find and click
the record and stop buttons on Photo Booth.
Storytelling
This is another example of a student-run project that requires very little technological know-how from the
teacher. There is however, a significant amount of time which has to be invested in student planning,
writing, and editing before they actually sit down in front of the laptop to record. Nothing’s worse than
having someone unprepared to tell a story with a line of students waiting to record. The amount of time
wasted on mistakes, oopsies, and “do-overs” is huge. Not only will they want to stop at each and every
little mistake, only to start over from the beginning, but without a well-rehearsed script, many students will
often forget what they wanted to say, or repeat themselves.
Once a solid, and well practiced story is ready for the camera, then it’s just the same as the video story
problem; sit down, record, make sure to go all the way through to the end despite mistakes (sometimes it
lends authenticity to the piece), and then stop and review. Students could tell stories about what’s going on
in class that week, an important realization or learning objective they’ve met, or just have a video
performance for a piece of fiction or non-fiction they may have written.
Reader’s Theater
Like the storytelling, only with a small group of students. Would be a great way for theater teachers to have
students assess their facial expressions, emotion conveyed through a dramatic reading, or even analyze the
timing and delivery of lines. Sure, you could do a simple audio recording, but having the visual piece
would lend itself to a more realistic analysis of a rehearse. Kind of like the football team going through last
Friday night’s game footage for highlights and areas to improve upon.
Daily Video Journal
This is probably my most favorite idea, because after a little bit of modeling at the beginning of the school
year, it could be completely student run. This would work especially well at the elementary level for those
teachers that have “star students” each day or week. Likewise, if a teacher has multiple jobs within the
room, it could be an assigned task for one student to record the days learning experiences to then reflect
upon, upload to a school website for sharing with parents, or to help students organize their thoughts after a
long day. You could have either one student, or a group of students collect notes throughout the day about
the big learning objectives and goals reached, or activities participated in, and then do a simple video digest
of the notes towards the end of the day.
However, the technological abilities of the teacher would be the heaviest with this option at the elementary
level, as the teacher would have to be comfortable uploading video to a site for sharing (read my thoughts
on a great video sharing site for schools here), and then either embedding the video on a school website, or
linking to it for viewing at home. The use of Photo Booth however, would still be pretty short, simple;
click, talk, stop, and poof the video is ready.
Could these ideas be improved upon? Heck yeah! Could the videos themselves be put through iMovie or
some other post-production tool to add titles, music, etc? Sure, it would even add to the whole idea of
students as professional learners to have their own daily learning video digest complete with theme music
and title sequence. Is it necessary though? Probably not. Playing around with new tools, and letting students
explore a bit on their own goes a long way in the classroom, without the need for fancy bells and whistles.
Oh, we love Photobooth in my class. We are currently using it as a time lapse
experiment. Kids have to take their pictures with it everytime they walk into the lab.
They will be able to make a cool slide show by the end of the year!
My students use PhotoBooth to create nametags to help me learn their names. I
work with the entire school population (520 eager learners!) every week. Early in
the school year, kids take a quick photo, add name then create a Wordle with first
name/last name and a few “faves” listed. Both documents are put into a sheet
protector that comes in handy for me, for substitutes, for creating table groups.
Ideas for Integrating Photo Booth in Your Classroom
 Take pictures of individual students in Photo Booth, organize and edit the
photos in iPhoto, and then use them in various projects, such as “About the
Author”, news reports, podcasts, etc.
 Take pictures of students throughout the year and add to their podcasts. The
photos along with the podcasts are excellent because you can see and hear
students’ growth throughout the year.
 Create a news report, eye witness account, "living history" presentation, etc.
by recording yourself/students in Photo Booth
 Create weekly/monthly class news reports that can be posted on your
classroom blog or website.
 Interview an inventor, scientist, pilgrim, government worker, etc.
 Explain how to do a math problem.
 Write and present a math problem for classmates to solve.
 Book reports- Click HERE for an example
 Summary, main idea, character analysis, etc.
 Book review, recommendation, evaluation, etc. – Good idea for Blue Bonnet
books
 Create a report about something you are studying (i.e. states, planets, biomes,
etc.)
 Create an infomercial (nonfiction, informational writing)
 Commercial (persuasive writing)
 Create a classroom “dictionary” where students create definitions for
themselves along with their pictures.
 When teaching action verbs, have students take pictures of themselves
performing the action verb.
 Define, explain, or act out the meaning of vocabulary words or various
emotions or reactions.
 Recite a poem or speech.
 Perform a reader's theater.
 Create “Getting to Know You” clips at the beginning of the year. Have students
rotate through during centers to learn more about their classmates.
 Research and present findings about weather, food chains, life cycles, planets,
or any other unit of study.
 Character education development – “How are you feeling today?” – students
take pictures of themselves displaying the different emotions. They can then
drag/drop the pictures into a Pages template and then print them out and
create a class book of emotions. This is a wonderful way to teach students
empathy. Click HERE for an example– scroll down and look under Seenly
 Video a master teacher while he/she is teaching writing, guided reading, math
solutions – use to train/educate other teachers.
 Perform with action figures, puppets, animals, etc. and act out a scene from a
book, play, etc.
 Public Service Announcements (PSAs): playground behavior, procedures,
cafeteria behavior, hand washing, sneezing/coughing into sleeve,
announcements, etc. Play through VBrick and/or post to blog or website.
 Create digital pop art-Click HERE for some examples
 Reading Assessment – have the students read a passage at the beginning of the
year, mid-year, and end of the year. Students/teachers can compare/assess
student progress.
 Oral Spelling, Math, Science, etc. tests – teacher dictates test in front of Photo
Booth camera and then provides to absent students or to other students as a
reteaching tool.
 Demonstrate writing, math problem, etc.; upload to website/blog for parents
to review with/assist their students.
 Record essential lectures/teaching or lesson for a sub to show to students
during teacher’s absence.
 Drag photos of student created artwork/backgrounds into Photo Booth and
then record/photograph students in front of the artwork/backdrop
 Student Council or other elections – prerecord and playback later
 School announcements – record early – add green screen – playback later
Use marker boards to create speech bubbles when taking a picture.
Use it with comic life to create a graphic novel.
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Puppet show with students using the puppets and recording the show
Photos of the students on the first day of school
Recording a student reading as concrete evidence
Interviewing students about a topic instead of them writing a record of an event
Visual record of paintings (with the student's face) for a digital portfolio
Responding to text - act out what they are doing - gives a sense of stage
Day book - what did we do today in the class- and have the recording playing when the parents
come to pick up the children
Claymation
Maths for reasoning, reflective questioning
Photo Booth takes the place of a video camera
Recording, authoring and documentation tool
Student driven creation of work
Gives the students a chance to reflect on data created by each other
Create a puppet show using finger puppets and the video recorder