As we hinted at in the Everyday Object post, PLP 8 just completed a major project on world religions called Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door. For this project, student investigate how is a religion’s worldview represented in the real world? We investigate this thoroughly in the classroom before heading out on a series of field studies, visiting a variety of both Eastern and Western religious places of worship.
It was a natural connection to us to use the Everyone Can Create Photo guide to enhance these field studies. So as we visited the various religion’s sites, students were tasked with documenting their choice of one of six different aspects of worldview and how it was represented in the real world at that site.
These still images formed a photo journalism task as described in Chapter 6 of the guide. Before we left the school on each trip, students made a list of the shots they would need once they hit the ground at the site. They also brainstormed about angles and composition, using suggestions in the guide. Despite the rain at some of the sites, students worked hard to get great angles for every shot – as you can see in the slideshow!
Taking pictures at the Hinduism Vedic Centre.
Then, once we returned to the classroom, students used Keynote to put the shots together and use minimal words to keep the story of their aspect of worldview as represented at the real world sites. Since the photo journalism documentary would be playing in the background during the night of the PLP Winter Exhibition, we didn’t add sound, but just focused on the images instead.
In all, the photo documentaries were a success as the PLP 8’s learned more about photos and religious worldviews. As Kira reflects, “it made the learning feel more real”.