How Can Teachers use OKIOCAM to Elevate Classroom Instruction?

Over the last few months, as more and more K12 classrooms are getting settled into the routine of a long school year, tech directors and instructional technology programs are beginning to gather to rethink and reimagine a new (and slightly altered) modern classroom.

This isn’t the first time that conversations like these have happened.  We have all gone through the ebb and flow of a school year where school district leaders debated how to get ahead of the curve and stay ahead of ever-changing digital learning environments.  But this year it’s just a little different.

In today’s post, we will look at a growing trend in K12 Digital Learning.  The trend of giving students personalized devices that not only are powerful enough to provide a comprehensive and interactive education, but also be small enough to be mobile for those “just in case the student needs time away from the classroom” moments that we have all come to know and struggle with.

How Do We Redefine 1:1 Learning?

Imagine you are a 4th-grade student, and you are working with your teacher on a project.  You have your laptop, and you have a classroom set of media devices at your disposal.  Now imagine yourself learning that for the next two weeks you will be forced to stay home and although learning might look different, you are still responsible for completing the same assignments as your peers.  What would you do?

Luckily for us, there is a solution to this in the form of compact, powerful, and interactive document cameras.  Today, we are going to look at some advantages of providing your teachers and students with a 1:1 program that includes personal document cameras from OKIOLABS.

What is the advantage of having a 1:1 Document Camera Program?

As mentioned above, a 1:1 Document Camera program can provide students with additional resources and options for individualized instruction.  Let’s look at three ways you can use an OKIOCAM in your classroom.

Using OKIOCAM for In-Person Learning

One of the advantages of using an OKIOCAM with your students is that they are lightweight and compact.  This allows for them to be stored in a variety of places in your classroom such a desk, or even a hangable “shoe cubby”.

No matter where you store your document cameras in the classroom, there are some great things you can do with your students to enhance their classroom instructional time.

Audio/Video Podcasts and Live Streaming Morning Announcements

OKIOCAM are powerful multidirectional cameras that provide added dimension to morning broadcasts.  In addition to being useful as a front-facing camera, principals and student broadcasters will love that they can quickly plugin (through USB) to their capture computers and show off the latest lunch menu, photos of events, or any other type of physical object.

Capturing Still Images of Desktop Activities

The other day, I was working with an art teacher who was asking for ways to quickly scan in and create images of student projects.  On one hand, I could have helped the teacher with an actual scanner, or I could have shown the teacher how to take photos with a cell phone, but instead, I helped the teacher use her document camera to quickly capture an entire class of projects in just a few minutes.

Using OKIOCAM for Hybrid Learning

For many school districts, the process of supporting students both in the classroom and out of the classroom on a quarantine assignment means that some form of Hybrid Learning is in place.

Unfortunately, for many students, learning from home and being asked to learn the same information alongside classmates physically in the classroom is impossible because of the lack of common learning activities and equipment.

Fortunately, the addition of a 1:1 Document Camera program will erase any of these equity challenges.  Here are some ideas for using OKIOCAM in a hybrid learning environment.

Showing Student Work

For many classroom teachers coming out of the pandemic, the thought of using digital tools is still a scary thought.  Teachers are trying to get students off of screens and away from being face to keyboard.  However, that doesn’t always work out when working with students who are in different locations.

By using OKIOCAM in both classroom and home learning environments, students can continue to create using physical learning tools such as pens, pencils, and paper while remaining in digital contact with each other through virtual learning rooms.

Supporting Special Education Students

One of the biggest challenges for any hybrid learning program is supporting the needs of Special Education students.  For many students with modifications to their learning objectives, the digital tools that we take for granted are simply too difficult for them to learn with both in the classroom and at home.

When supporting students at home with OKIOCAM, it provides a much more tactile learning opportunity both for the student and for any adult at home supporting that student.

 

Using OKIOCAM for Remote Learning

So far, we have looked at how a 1:1 Document Camera Program can be used to support both in-person and hybrid learning, but what happens if you find yourself in a position where all your students are at home.

Thanks to the compact size of the OKIOCAM, students from kindergarten on up can easily transport and keep up with their curricular work from any location using any USB device available to them.

Supporting Early Readers

One of the best ways to use a Document camera at home is by sharing with others a love of reading.  However, sometimes you need to have your camera pointed at a certain angle that your traditional laptop camera can’t easily be positioned to.  Thanks to the lightweight and easily portable features provided by OKICAM, students of all ages can sit back with a good book and practice their reading skills to a teacher or family loved one.  What better way to show off a student’s progress in ELA than putting a show for friends and family across the country than by having your students do visual book reports and reviews in real-time.

Parent Conferences

Let’s face it, sometimes the school-provided laptops are the only devices that a family has in their homes.  For this reason, the use of an external video camera would be a vital tool in supporting parent communication during parent conferences and Special Education meetings.  The wide range of view on the OKIOCAM easily allows multiple adults to interact with their students supporting educators while removing the need for parents to be sitting on top of each other through the built-in, low-resolution webcams on their school devices.

Have You Tried This with Your Document Camera?

OKIOCAM cameras are your one-stop solution for students interacting with both their physical and digital classrooms.  By using the OKIOCAM Snapshot and Recorder, your students can create authentic lessons that are publishable and shareable.

An additional option to the camera, the OKIOCAM Education Kit includes OKIOCAM Stop Motion to turn your classroom into a fully-featured Stop Motion video studio.

Simply create a space in your classroom to set up physical objects such as dinosaurs or POP! figures and in no time your students are creating animated movies that could rival Hollywood!

What Can You Do With Your OKIOCAM This Year?

If you are looking for a quick and simple way to showcase and broadcast student work this year, check out the lineup of Document Cameras available from OKIOLABS today. They are very compact, simple to set up, and would make a great addition to your digital learning centers this year.

The OKIOCAM comes in three different models:

OKIOCAM S

• Designed for students. This model is equipped with a 3-mega pixel  OKIOCAM S comes with a smaller base. The maximum shooting area is around 8.5×11 inches (letter size). The buttons on OKIOCAM S control the exposure and focus.

OKIOCAM T

• Designed for Teachers. This model is equipped with a 5-mega pixel  OKIOCAM T comes with a larger base. The maximum shooting area is around 11×17 inches (ledger size). The buttons on OKIOCAM T control the exposure, zoom, and focus.

OKIOCAM T Plus

• Designed for simulating in-class teaching. Tech specification of this model is exactly the same as OKIOCAM T. However, OKIOCAM T Plus comes with an Anti-glare coating foldable whiteboard, a dry-erase marker, and a microfiber wiper to clean the whiteboard.

To learn more about OKIOCAM, Click Here.

Disclosure Statement: This is a “sponsored blog post.”  Everything written above was my own writing and my own viewpoints and my own recommendations.