Teachers and Educators
"Saving the Family Album" curriculum is now available
with full course lesson plan, classroom handout and samples of
children's creations.
In the learning activity the students will learn how to use computer technology
at home and school to:
Develop a PowerPoint Presentation using family pictures to
tell the family’s story and history.
Copy and back up existing family photos to preserve them on
CDs and share them with other family members around Thanksgiving
time.
The reasons for the school doing the
project are to:
Promote a sense of family.
Preserve the student’s family picture album safely with
a back up to avoid losses due to natural disasters and hard drive
failure on computer (11 of the 22 students talked about hard
drive failures that their family computers experienced).
Develop an appreciation for family history (and better understanding
of general history) amongst the students.
Better develop the student’s understanding of technology
and its hand on use in developing presentations and working with
graphics.
Perfect as part of a unit study on
immigration
“Saving the Family Album” combines elements of history,
language arts and technology while meeting core curriculum requirements.
The lesson plan is tested, thorough, and easily taught. A PowerPoint presentation
called “My Family Story” is provided as a model for the students
to inspire their creativity. Gets parents involved with children's education
and helps strengthen family bonds. Teachers and students, have expressed
that this is a win/win educational program. It’s fun, educational,
builds family values and a sense of the student’s place in
history.
Currently the curriculum has been promoted and taught in grades
5 - 8, but
is a perfect project for all ages. The students bring in
their older family pictures and more current ones to scan and preserve
on discs.
Similarly, it was recognized that traditional family albums (paper
photographs) are also at risk. Fire, flood, hurricanes,
accident, or even misplacing a traditional album risks losing irreplaceable
memories forever.
See how other teachers are using the program
About OSTA and Saving the Family Album
Sponsored by the Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA) "Saving the
Family Album" gives parents and students insight into "Saving
the Family Album" using PowerPoint and optical discs. OSTA is concerned
that many modern photographers using digital cameras only save images to their
computer’s hard drive. Since one out of fourteen hard drives
are reported to fail within their first six months of use, saving images on one
storage device risks losing those pictures forever. A survey of students
indicated that in the last seven years, approximately half of their households
had a computer whose hard drive “crashed” resulting in lost pictures
and data. Similarly, it was recognized that traditional family albums (paper
photographs) are also at risk. Fire, flood, hurricanes,
accident, or even misplacing a traditional album risks losing irreplaceable
memories forever.
Archiving these photos on Optical Discs solves this problem, and
even has some additional benefits to the picture’s owner.
There is safety in numbers and by making several copies of the
newly digitally saved album, the owner can ensure a considerably
reduced likelihood that these images will be lost. Also, it is
terribly expensive and inconvenient to make copies of all the paper
pictures in a traditional photo album. Usually, there is only one
copy of each original photo. Optical Discs have become so affordable
that copies can be made for less than fifty cents each of Discs
that contain an entire photo album in the form of scanned images.
These inexpensive copies can then be distributed to other family
members for their use and enjoyment. In the event of a natural
disaster, the chance of losing these images is reduced further
thanks to geographic diversity.
