Clicking with the shutterbugs

As part of a statewide technology program, third-graders at Newport Coast use digital cameras to document their lives.While experimenting with a digital camera recently at home, Cole Collins got a surprising shot.

“I took a picture of my dog, but he jumped at the camera,” recalled Cole, 8, a Newport Coast Elementary School third-grader.

Cole and his classmates had an unusual assignment that week: to capture their everyday lives through pictures.

They took photographs of their friends, parents and siblings, mealtimes, toys -- and, as in Cole’s case, a few spontaneous moments.

Last October, Newport Coast teacher Stacy Bex received a grant through the California Technology Assistance Project to provide digital cameras to all her students.

The statewide program, run locally through the Orange County Department of Education, offers state-of-the-art equipment to enhance classroom learning.

Every week, Bex’s students have worked with their cameras both at home and at school.

On Jan. 28, they will show off their mastery with a slide show at the Orange County Student Technology Showcase Festival in Fullerton.

The students’ first project, and the one to be featured in the show, involved geometry -- specifically, finding prisms, cubes, spheres and other shapes in everyday life and capturing them in photos.

“There’d be titles like, ‘This tissue box is a cube,’ ” said Krista Schildwachter, 9.

Soon after, the students turned their cameras on themselves and spent a week taking documentary images of their lives.

Although the digital cameras allowed students to snap as many pictures as possible, their assignment allowed for only 12 shots -- which taught them to analyze photos as well as take them.

A future assignment will involve a photo sequence of a different kind: Students will put together books that tell stories through images, with only a few words to move the narrative along.

Although some of the students in Bex’s class were new to photography, a few were old hands.

Krista and Brooke Taylor, both 8, said they owned cameras at home and often took photos around the house.

Gianna Genova, 9, said that after a few months in the class, she aimed for pictures that were significant as well as pretty.

“We think of what it has in it,” she said.

“If it has great stuff that truly represents your life, that’s one you should keep. If you’re taking a picture of dinner and it’s just your dinner plate, I don’t think that’s a very good picture. You should take a picture of your whole family eating dinner.”20060124itgzmgnc(LA)Third-graders Sarah Chey, left, Natalie Meltzer, Megan Peacock and Brook Taylor gather around the computer of teacher Stacy Bex, far left, to check their work after shooting some photos in class.20060124itgzlwncPHOTOS BY DON LEACH / DAILY PILOT(LA)Third-graders in Stacy Bex’s class at Newport Coast Elementary turn cameras on themselves as part of a project that blends photography with academics.