Looking through the Lens: Adapting and Modifying Photovoice Projects for Active Learning and Engagement in Biology†

A photo voice or photo novella is a collection of photographs and captions that tells a social story. Each photovoice project is different, and each project has a different focus. With photovoice projects, stories are told, different original photographs are captured and different outcomes are sought. Your photovoice project topic: The topic of your project is Disease/Addiction in my Community. Please give your project a distinctive title. Instructions: 1. Choose your topic and think about the message you may want to portray to your audience. Do the relevant reading required to support your project and make a collection of different sources and information. 2. Go out into your community and interview people relevant to your topic (ie: if your topic is the effects of cigarette smoking then you would interview people who are cigarette smokers). Prepare a set of questions beforehand and note down their answers to your questions. 3. The interview is optional, you may include excerpts from the interview in your photovoice. 4. Take 20-25 photographs using either a camera or your smart phone of situations and people relevant to your topic. Please ask permission before taking photographs of people or private property. 5. Decide how you will arrange the photographs. 6. Place your photographs in a PowerPoint presentation, you may add artistic effects and add one-sentence captions to your photographs with the message you want to portray (~15-20 slides). 2 7. Add a title slide (first slide) with your photovoice title, name, class and instructor and also a relevant photograph that you have taken. On the last slide(s) write your reflections and what you learned from doing this project. 8. Find relevant song/background music and add that to your PowerPoint as a sound track – figure out how to do this or ask your friends. Add some slide transition effects and timings to the slides so that they play as a movie-once again figure out how to do this or ask your friends. Your instructor will mentor you in class while you are putting together your project. You will be presenting and discussing your photovoice presentation in class with your peers (time limit for presentation 5 minutes). Category All the information needs to be included to receive all 25 points in the category. Missing or incomplete portions may result in fractional points. Please include any critiques and suggestions that will be helpful for directing student improvement.