Not only is technology fun and motivating for our students, but also a powerful tool for learning. Teachers in schools and high schools should give their studens as many chances as possible to use technologies integrating them into the curriculum because they would get better results than with traditional methods. One of these opportunities could be using digital cameras in class.
Ideas for using them in your ESL classroom:
1. For the first class or when teaching Countries and Nationalities, you can ask your students to divide in groups of six people. Then, tell them they have to imagine they don't start school in Spain but in England where there are many students from other countries. They have to write a short play with questions for the first class day, such as "Hello, how are you? My name is... And I come from ... Where are you from?" "I am from... but I have lived here for ..." "Oh, that's great! Are there many shops, museums or theatres in the city?". Then, they have to record their play with their cameras, using imagination.
2. Another idea is to do the same activity but collecting friend's photos, England photos, looking for information about England, timetables, subjects, food... and make a presentation in class. For this task students can use Movie Maker to create a slide show which they will use in their presentation. After that, they have to talk about their first day of class in a British school or a trip to London. Here you will find an example made by university students, you can adapt to your students level.
3. Students can also use digital cameras for creating TV commercials. Two students are the reporters, others the Sports journalist who has to talk about sports and interview famous players; the national reporters who have to talk about events in the country; the international reporters in different parts of the world; culture journalists to tell about cultural events, shows in the world and interview famous writers, singers..., and the weather reporter who has to talk about the weather in the world. They have to write the stories, try to memorize them and create a short play to recorded later.
4. If your students are beginners, you can help them to perform a song. Watch here a cute example.
You will find more ideas in the following link. I hope these ideas are useful for motivating your students to learn English.
