Get to know your class

On the first day of class I take a picture of every student.  I don’t have a nice plain wall to use as a background.  I pull the projector screen down in the front of the room and have each student stand in front of it.  It works well.

As I take each picture, I have the students write their names on a sheet of paper.  The camera saves the pictures as files with consecutive numbers at the end of the file names.   After class I rename each picture using the student’s name from the gradebook.  I use Irfanview‘s Thumbnail tool to create a contact sheet for each class (insert is pixelated to protect the identities of my students).  I use this to learn the names of the students.

After making the contact sheet, I resize all the pictures to 1024×768 and store them in the document area of Blackboard.  We use the pictures in several assignments during the semester.  We make several PowerPoint presentations using the pictures.  When we format Word documents, I have them place their own picture at the top of the document (makes it easy to know who the paper belongs to) and format text around it.  I use them in another lesson that requires the student to demonstrate knowledge of cropping.  In one assignment I have each student select a graphics program and add text over the picture.

The only thing I do not have them do is place the pictures on a public network, which is why I have pixelated the contact sheet in this post.  That leads to discussions on privacy and copyright.