While on vacation last week, I grabbed a few of those MacWeek magazines in the airport…. a little geeky light reading for the plane. One of them mentioned an app I’ve seen discussed in the education circles: Project 365.

My daughter (an avid photographer and teen-age iPhone user) and I both downloaded the app and got started. I found it to be an interesting exercise while on vacation. Some days I took lots of photos, so the choice of one was difficult. Other days, I had to remind myself to stop, think, and take a picture of something that summed up the day.

Now that I am home, it’s even harder. What is it about my day-to-day life that is photo worthy? What do I do that sums up the day? It’s only been a couple of days, but so far I seem to be looking for outdoor shots to capture the change in seasons (an unseasonably early spring.)

Both my daughter and I are finding this a fun experiment. We each find very different things to document, which in itself makes this a worthy experience. We enjoy sharing our choices and talking about why we selected something. It is making both of us look at things in new ways, and to seek out the “special” in the humdrum of daily life.

Why post about this here? As a parent, I am happy to have found something to share with my daughter that we both enjoy and allows us to talk about something. I enjoy looking at her photography, which is far better than mine.

How could you do something like this in a classroom setting? Is it educational? I can see many ways this could be used in a specific class or as a bigger assignment. Most kids have some way they could photograph some moment of their day. What a great opportunity to teach about responsible photography (no pictures of anyone else w/o permission, etc.) It could lead to writing assignments, blogs and more.

I know I’ve seen Project 365 on other education technology websites, so just looked. Sure enough, Richard Byrne just posted about it with the awesome idea of this being a way for kids to build up a copyright free library of images to use. EAR.org posted a bunch of ways to use it.

I’ll check back with you in a year to see how it went!