Tools for K-12 Photography Education

People who teach K-12 photography need all kinds of things: lesson plans, course-paks, instruction manuals, equipment (including ways of making your own), materials (including inexpensive substitutes for standard products), relevant readings for themselves and their students, bibliographies, ideas for exhibition methods . . . the list goes on.

Our Tools page is a collecting point for things that K-12 teachers and students can do for themselves and will find immediately useful. If you have taught K-12 photography, you probably have something to contribute here. Tell us how you built cameras with your students or improvised darkroom equipment, what exciting experiments you conducted, how you organized and mounted a show or published a book of student work. Share your assignments, your syllabi, your reading lists, your successful grant proposals. If they're specific and self-contained — a provocative assignment, a simple and inexpensive system for framing prints, a design for pinhole cameras — we'll post them here. If you want to discuss them with others, then you can also participate in The New Eyes Project Forum.

Publications:

• PDN Edu: published by Photo District News, PDN Edu appears twice a year, February and September. Subscriptions are free; you can get copies delivered in bulk to your program. Primarily oriented toward college-level users, but intended also for use at the high-school level.
• American Photo On Campus: published by American Photo, AP On Campus appears twice a year, Spring and Fall. Similar in format and content to PDN Edu. Subscriptions are free; you can get copies delivered in bulk to your program. Primarily oriented toward college-level users, but intended also for use at the high-school level. Call (212) 767-6273. (No substantial website for this publication; the link above just takes you to a brief descriptive note at the American Photo website.)
• Photo Ed: Published by the Photo Educators' Forum in Canada, an organization for secondary school tachers, this magazine comes out three times a year. Subscription required; special price on class sets of 20 or more.They also publish a Guide to Photography intended to serve as an introductory textbook for high-school classes (special price on class sets of 20 or more of the Guide as well).

Course materials:

• Apogee Photo: Self-described as "the Internet's photography magazine . . . designed to inform and entertain photographersof all ages and levels," Apogee includes interviews, profiles, and articles on technical subjects, some of them in a "Young People's Photography Archives."
• LensWork: One of the best "little" magazines in the field, LensWork appears bimonthly in both print and CD-ROM "extended" formats. Editorially, it emphasizes clear, non-jargonized prose, making it accessible to the average high-school student. Profiles, interviews, and articles on technical issues. The publishing project includes a book division, some of whose titles include material that might prove suitable for high-school readers, all of it useful for teachers. As a bonus, the website offers an assortment of free podcasts.
• Mac On Campus: Offers some free PDF downloads. Registration (free) required.