PetaPixel ran a story last month about used camera prices going up. This wasn’t necessarily news to me, as someone who has, more than once, blogged on here about picking up thrift store cameras for classroom use.

At first I noticed it with the Canon Vixia models. Vixia as a line still exists, but they’re larger, more professional models only these days. The tinier ones, line the Canon VIXIA HF R400? I got so much work out of them with my students. For the price they had amazing lenses as well as 1/8″ jacks for audio in and out.

I did occasionally manage to snag one or two used models, but these days the working ones go for the same as what they cost brand new, if not more.

Same is true with compact cameras. Yeah, there’s a resurgence of new models out there, but the really popular ones are models that were discontinued years ago. Back in 2020 I was able to pick up a bunch of them for a song. Now? I don’t even place a bid – especially if they’re a color that isn’t silver or black.

I’m aware that most of the renewed demand is for the vintage aesthetic of old cameras. They aren’t just functional, using one itself is a fashion statement. (I’m not disagreeing, there’s a reason my favorite still camera right now is a Camp Snap Pro.)

But also, none of these older cameras have AI “features” while still having decent enough sensors and lenses to do what’s needed.

Heck, a lot of the older models will run off of AA batteries, taking one less proprietary part off of the “hope it exists in a few years” list.

The most popular camera in my room is not the best camera if you’re looking for megapixels, sensor size, or features. It’s the one that’s pink, that I got for @ $15 including shipping.

But I’d also argue it does a better job taking a photo than most phones my students bring to school. It’s dedicated towards that end, with none of the distractions baked into an always online device.

If I could still get that model for $15, I’d buy a class set.

The Why

I did Blaugust this year on a whim.

No, that’s not entirely true. I did it to procrastinate other tasks on my to-do list, and to get myself back into blogging after a very significant break. My brain needed some kind of goal to focus on in order to get past that “I can always start tomorrow” wall.

But also on a whim.

But also because a friend of mine who liked participating in Blaugust wasn’t able to this year because of health reasons.

And also another person who I’d have liked to call a friend (a few conversations on Mastodon is not enough to reach that point) isn’t around any more to lead us through Blaugust.

The Past

I started this blog on January 25th, 2005 as a project for a grad school course. The final project for the class had to be a website, but I’d already been doing HTML coding for 9 years at that point and, while I was no expert, I was further along than what was expected by the curriculum.

So I made a blog instead of hand-coding a static website with an image and a handful of links. If I remember correctly, it was originally hosted on a .Mac or Geocities account (I can’t remember which, both are long gone, now) and built using Thingamablog, which ran on a Mac but output the entire blog as static pages you could then upload somewhere without needing PHP or mySQL support.

At that point getting everything to look the way I want was way more of a challenge than what was expected, but I wanted to get something out of the class. Oddly enough, Mark Harden (whose “Artchive” was featured in that inaugural post) was eventually one of my grad school professors.

Unless I’m remembering this wrong. It was 20+ years ago, after all.

Less than 4 months later, I was podcasting.

By December 2005 I was part of the Discovery Educator Network, which was always meant to be a way to encourage teachers to advertise Discovery Education’s streaming service for free, but back then they were in the “spend lots of money and just encourage people to make cool things” stage so a young(er) and naive me didn’t catch on.

Throughout that journey I never stopped blogging and podcasting, up until 2008 when I got a job offer for my current building. I’d no longer be a traveling art teacher, or even an art teacher (by strict job description definition), but instead I’d be teaching technology to K-8 students.

I leapt on the opportunity immediately.

Since then my job description has changed. I’m back in the Creative Arts department because that’s what video production, photography, graphic design, and podcasting all are. I’m having a ton of fun, and I’ve also been very, very busy.

So busy that I stopped podcasting and blogging.

Oh, I’d pop in from time to time with an update. Maybe I’d post the slides and/or recording of my conference presentation from that year. It wasn’t the same, though. What had been a place for me to excitedly share things or angrily rant about them had become a place where I stored stuff.

A lot happened. I figured out what the Discovery Educator Network was and jumped out of the boiling pot. I started (and ended) other podcast projects. I restarted my podcast here, then ended it again mid-recording when I realized it wasn’t a fun thing so much as a chore I was forcing myself to complete.

My wife died.

I started another podcast with a group of friends, unrelated to anything I put here. It’s been going strong for over 9 years, now, updating twice a week.

But it’s not about what I do for a living.

My current school district is very big on goal setting. I set goals for my students based on collected data, then check to see if they met those goals. I set a goal for myself, then do the same. My yearly evaluation partly depends on these.

Last year, my goal was “Move Slow and Fix Things.” I didn’t start any brand new initiatives, I just went through and revised any of the older things that needed updating or, well, fixing. Not to brag, but in the process all of my students met the goals I set for them and I earned the highest evaluation rating possible.

The Future (…we got here eventually.)

Last year I was looking internally, at what we had in the building and what needed revisions.

This year, I’m looking outward.

You may have noticed (or not, I don’t check site analytics) that most things I wrote for this year’s Blaugust were reactions to other things I saw online. Usually news articles. Occasionally a video, for flavor.

This was a self-imposed limitation, along with the daily posting. Neither was required for Blaugust, which in fact has very few rules about how to do it beyond not copy/pasting an AI output and calling it a day.

My purpose for this blog’s revival is to force me to look for things that relate in some way to what I do for a living and archive my reactions to them.

I don’t intend to polish what I write here. I expect typos to get through. I expect meandering train-of-thought old-man-telling-stories-again essays that would make any Language Arts teacher reflexively grab for a red pen.

But I also expect to be more informed about what’s changing in the world around me, so I can bring the good parts into my classroom and preparing my students to endure the bad parts.

For Blaugust, I managed 31 posts in 31 days. There’s no way I’m keeping that up now that the school year’s starting.

But I think I can manage at least one a week. More, if there’s some clouds that need me to yell at them, but let’s set once a week as a minimum.

It’s good to be back.

Ewen Bell has released a video where he encourages his viewers to buy the camera they love.

He’s very adamant about it, to the point where he says it repeatedly throughout the video, but also he mentions that if you already love the camera you’re using, you don’t have to buy another.

I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a career photographer say that before, but here we are.

I started following Ewen Bell because where we have a similar knowledge base we tend to agree, but he has far more experience in several areas so I’m bound to learn something from watching.

For example: I learned there’s little chance I’ll be buying his favorite camera. A used model costs over $2,000 US, which is not something he brought up in the video. For a professional photographer, that’s still quite reasonable. For me, not so much.

As a digital media teacher I’m frequently asked what things should be purchased. Parents and students want to know what the “best” thing is, as if all electronic devices were organized in a line from best to worst. Instead, I hem and haw about types of cameras and what works well for which situation.

Buying what you love is a far easier metric than any objective standards that I’d be able to manage.

My students still understand this, to some degree. I’ve a bunch of cameras in my room, but the ones they gravitate towards aren’t the newest or most expensive. They’re the ones they enjoy the most. Some of that’s aesthetics, some of it’s ease of use, but all of their criteria are valid.

Unless they want to borrow one of the DSLRs that’s too old to do video in order to record video. Then they’re going to run into a problem or two.

(TL;DR: College Surplus stores are neat!)

The Switch and Click YouTube channel recently published a video where they end with a decent desktop computer that doesn’t break the bank.

I like a lot (though not all) of what I see from that specific channel. They have some neat ideas and while they don’t explain every step they at least go over enough to let me know if I should research further to do a thing myself.

This time around, I’d not suggest the average person try what they did, because they aren’t average people.

Part of the premise of this particular video has them going to Facebook Marketplace to get parts to build a computer and/or a fully built computer that they can upgrade. This involved getting into the guts of the machine, diagnosing problems and bottlenecks, and making sure that the new parts are actual improvements.

For them, it seems trivial.

For me, who has built a few computers in my day, it would be a challenge.

For the average person who needs to go this route because they cannot afford a computer any other way, this is a lot of additional work with no guaranteed payoff, meaning that money could just go down the drain.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled when someone with an interest gets into computer building and maintenance. I think it’s a neat hobby that can with a little more work become a source of income.

I am the only person in my family who thinks this is neat, and one of them has an engineering degree. Do I think they could manage it? Yes! There’s enough instructions out there and my family members tend to have decent critical thinking skills.

… But that’s not how they want to spend their time, and for several of them they don’t have the time to spend doing this.

I’ve had the luxury of having enough income and leisure time to do what I’ve done. If someone doesn’t have both of those I will not fault them for going a different route.

So what options are left?

Sadly, not a ton of good ones. As much a fan as I am of thrift stores, it’s my experiences (some hard-earned) that keep me from getting a lemon. That took time. As much as I despise Meta, I’ve heard good things about deals found there, but that takes more time and can include more risks.

That leaves most thinking their only choices are the big online stores like Amazon, Woot (which is Amazon’s store for refurbished, open box, and clearance items), and NewEgg. I confess that back in the day before I kicked the habit of sending money for Bezos’ yacht, I got more than one decent machine from Woot – most of which are still working just fine today, including a couple that are over a decade old. If you’re low on cash and time, I wouldn’t blame you for using Woot even if I have enough privilege to avoid it.

But there’s another neat one: Surplus Stores.

There’s a few like this, I’m sure, but I found out these exist when a friend told me about her local university’s outlet for selling surplus and used items.

Can I get better deals from Goodwill’s online auctions? Absolutely, but that takes time and luck.

Compare that to MSU’s store, where I can just go to the Desktop category and buy a desktop.

It’s not perfect. You still need to read the descriptions to make sure you know what you’re getting. (That $20 computer with 16GB of RAM sounds great, but it’s that cheap because you need to install a hard drive and also the processor’s old enough and low power enough that the RAM won’t be the bottleneck for how fast it’s running.) But there’s no bidding wars and a lot of these should work out of the box for way less than what Switch & Click paid for their example computer in their video.

If it wasn’t for how much I’ve spent on back-to-school items already, I’d be inclined to get one or two of these myself.

You know…

Just in case I need them.

I recently watched a YouTube video by Mark Urban where he complains about aspect ratios.

Reading that previous sentence usually has me thinking it’s going to be a rant about which format is preferred over the other. (I’m a horizontal video person myself, but that’s mainly because that’s what I watch.) This video doesn’t do that. Instead, it addresses concerns that I, as someone who doesn’t freelance, usually never has to consider.

As is my trend, I won’t be summarizing the video here. It’s worth watching, even if the best possible solution (paying for two photographers so you get both shots) is sadly impractical.

Or is it?

I teach students to make video. For the past two years, we’ve partnered with an organization outside the school to do client work for them. If I have more than one student collecting b-roll and a-roll, it’s trivial to have one record horizontally while the other records vertically.

This could lead to some interesting discussions about what to do with the shots, who the target audiences are, and how the aspect ratio affects the compositions.

And also there’s going to be that student that takes the vertical video and edits it so it’s in a horizontal aspect ratio but not cropped, so there’s large black boxes on either side. That’s a whole other discussion.

As I type this, I’m watching a well-made documentary about the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. It’s not on Netflix, Hulu, or even YouTube. Well, maybe it is, but that’s not where I’m watching it.

PBS has been building a rather impressive website, complete with streaming video. It has closed captions, different resolution options, and even playback speed controls.

It also has an option to go to the PBS site for my local station. When I first visited, it defaulted to WETA PBS, which is based out of Virginia. The first choice screen gave me WETA, Maryland Public Television, and Howard University Television (which is based out of D.C.).

Wanting to see what else was there I picked the “More Stations” button, and was prompted to enter a state or zip code. On a whim, I thought I’d check the PBS station I remember watching when I was younger.

Making the selection still gives you access to tons of shows, including documentaries and dramas, but also lets you select from their local shows (Scholastic Scrimmage, local interests, and more).

There’s more than one spot where I’m prompted to donate or sign in to watch additional content, and considering their current changes in funding I don’t fault PBS for this, but the thing is I didn’t know any of this was here.

I mean, I knew PBS was online, but I thought they mostly put selected shows on YouTube or the various paid streaming services.

I’m glad this is here. I need to come back to it more often.

404 Media has an article by Emanuel Maiberg on 3d models (assets for graphic design, video game creation, etc.) and how a lot of the current ones being made for sale are AI generated, but no one is buying them.

This pairs with an earlier article by Justin Nelon over on Digital Citizen covering how video games on Steam that are marked as made with some AI content tend to get far less play time.

Said nicely, consumers are preferring things made by humans. A bit more rudely, no one wants to pay for AI slop.

This is a lesson I intend to keep in mind as I talk to my students about the tools they can use. They might think AI is great for cutting corners and getting more done, but the end result tends to be media that is less desired than anything else they could have done.

Where I encounter the most AI use is in research and script writing. Students hate those portions the most (at least in my class), so they try to pawn that off on a machine. The results get troublesome when they get dinged for not including sources (or including ones that don’t cover the content researched). I might not be the best at recognizing AI writing, but I can follow a source link just fine.

I’m looking forward to the bubble burst, when anyone wanting to use AI is more likely going to have to pay for the slop they’re getting. According to current data, they won’t be paying for it.

The Hechinger Report has some great writers who hit important points as they cover news stories about education. They also have frequent “Opinion” pieces which tend to be guest essays, frequently written by someone with a vested interest in having you buy into the idea(s) they’re selling.

They might be good ideas! However, it’s always a good idea to understand bias exists and look at the work through that lens. (I don’t exempt myself from this. Everything I put on this site has bias, because it’s MY website. We tend to see news sites in a different light, though.)

Take, for example, a recent opinion piece by Lenore Skenazy on letting children play rather than providing guided instruction.

The author has a book on the subject as well as a nonprofit to promote these ideas. The bias is clearly there. This is not a news story so much as an ad read for their ideas.

They aren’t bad ideas.

One of the things I enjoy doing in my K-5 classes is giving students a day to just experience a new tool. Most times I’ll go over some basics “Your brush options are over here on the left, the color picker works like this,” but after that I let them loose.

I never go over everything. First, there’s too much. The only ones who’d get to play with the tool would be the ones who stopped paying attention.

Just as important, though, would be how the students learn after that. Invariably, someone does something they think is cool. They yell to the rest of the class in a way that, for other lessons, would be seen as disruptive.

Suddenly, there’s a crowd of kids around one computer learning how to do a thing from one of their peers. They all go back to their seats, eager to try it out for themselves.

This usually happens several times in the same lesson. On occasion, I learn something new as well.

Later on I’ll come in with a more narrowed scope, where we use that same tool to make a certain kind of artwork. They learn new skills and techniques, then, often ones that translate to a variety of media in an outside of my classroom.

But they remember the joy they got from trying things out. That sticks with them as they incorporate those first day lessons into the new one.

That sticks with them.

Edsurge has an article by David Weldon on Middle School reading scores and their continued decline. As much as I’m tempted to turn this post into another rant against high stakes testing and its effectiveness, I’m just going to ask you to review your notes for that chapter and move on.

My own love of reading stems in part from my mother. She was a kindergarten teacher and frequently read to us before bed. (Sometimes she sat in the hallway so all of her children could hear the same story at the same time.) On long car trips, SHE was the audio book.

I read my first book without assistance because I’d gotten so tired of my sister asking for the same story over and over again that I just grabbed something else and read it to myself out of spite. Not the best motive, perhaps, but I was a child and that was the memory.

This of course required a lot of books. We had a bunch, sometimes found at yard sales and flea markets, but as someone who’s recently taken up thrifting as a hobby I can tell you that still takes money, and what you save in finances you lose in time and energy.

Fortunately, we had a solution: Our town’s public library.

My mother left the classroom when she had me, so she had the time to bundle us kids up and drive us to the most exciting building in town once a week. We each got books that seemed interesting to us, with the curation mostly limited to “get it from the children’s section” up until I was old enough to walk there after school on my own.

This seems idyllic in part because I’m viewing it through the lens of nostalgia, but also in large part to my mom’s hard work.

… and there’s the cost.

Libraries are free to the public, but if my mom had still been teaching I’m not sure we’d have been able to go once a week, or even once a month, during the school year. My father worked much harder to make ends meet so that we could have the privilege of growing up with a stay-at-home mom.

Finances aside, wrangling children is an adventure of its own. My sister (not the one mentioned earlier) is the most put-together makes-the-right-parental-choices person I’ve ever met, and I’m not saying that lightly. It still takes her a significant amount of time to load her two small children into a vehicle to go on a short trip.

She’s also a stay-at-home mom.

So how do two income families manage library trips?

How do single parent families manage library trips?

There’s an ongoing theme of people below a certain economic threshold having a very hard time to get above it. Everything requires money, it seems, and if you want to save money you either need to already have enough money or have enough time.

Those who are struggling frequently have neither.

Libraries are painfully aware of this, and are here to help.

The last place I lived, I signed up for a library card without ever walking through the door of their local branch. I went to the website and entered some information, then *poof,* I had an identification number that was effectively my card.

(It was faster to go into the library near my current place and get a card, but I’m privileged to live very close to that library.)

At the time, I used it to sign up for Libby. It’s a great service provided by many libraries that offers free books in both text and audio formats. These are still considered loans from your local library so if 4 people want to check out a book and they have authorization for 3 copies, one of them will have to wait, but you’re not paying a monthly Audible subscription or Amazon membership for the privilege of downloading books to your phone or tablet.

I’m not going to say Libby’s a perfect solution because there isn’t any. It still requires you to have an online device and, as ubiquitous as phones tend to be these days, they aren’t always available.

But my love of reading comes from my mother reading to me, with weekly trips to the library.

If Libby or something like it had been around back then (and the internet … this was before then, too), those weekly trips could have been daily.

She wouldn’t have even had to load up the car.

Raf Lopes wrote on PetaPixel about his experiences with a camera designed to shoot square photos, and how it affects composition choices.

I’m old enough to recall a time when TVs were 4:3 and movies made for big screens were cropped down to that aspect ratio to get them to “fit.”

This was done in two ways: If the person doing the conversion was overworked or lazy, they set a camera up to film the movie and let it run centered for the duration. Any action on the edges was lost, but oh, well.

If the person doing the conversion had the energy and time to do better they would pan their camera to follow the action as it went closer to the left or right of the composition. This required some editorial and aesthetic decisions on their part that might not made with consultation with the original makers of the film.

Later on we got “Letter-boxed” versions that were seen as better because nothing was cropped out, but in the days before HD video being a universal thing this still meant a lot of detail just wasn’t there any more.

I remember cassette tapes, which often had the same album art as records but cropped to be rectangles. Then CDs became more popular and we went back to squares for everything. We still have that legacy, it’s why album art for music today is always a square, even if it’s (almost) all downloads or streaming.

I remember programmers working hard to get their creations to be less than 1.44 MB (technically a little less than that) because if you went over and needed two floppy disks you doubled your distribution costs. The innovations they made because they had to were amazing.

This isn’t a “good old days” or “things are so much better” blog post, but it’s interesting to see how creativity flows to fill the shape of different containers. Sometimes it’s begrudgingly (cassette tapes), other times, like in the article linked above, it’s transformative.

My classroom is a container, regardless of if I want it to be or not. Try as I might, I still have students submit videos where the actual text on the title card is “Project 2” instead of “The Great Escape,” “Bob Finds A Thing,” or anything else that makes it be less “I did this for a grade” and more “I have created documentation of my own creativity.”

In the other extreme, sometimes I have to talk with a student about what “G Rated” means, and why we need to make videos conform to that for the district Film Festival.

(It’s not just because of the student code of conduct, it’s also because elementary students participate so they WILL see the videos. Blood and death are neat and cool to a 13 year old, but perhaps not a good idea to show a 6 year old.)

What I write here is shaped by the container I’m in as a teacher. The content I cover, the words I use, are all done with the understanding that a student, parent, or administrator who knows me will find this website.

It’s happened. Multiple times, in fact. I don’t tell anyone at school where this is and my name’s common enough that Googling me will find other, more famous people first (adding qualifying terms leads to sites maintained by my employer more than anything else) so it would be easy to slide into a false sense of security through obscurity, but then I remember I’ve been found before.

(You’ll notice I never use profanity. I’ll even warn the reader if a link goes someplace that does. This is why.)

Sometimes, when the container/media changes, the art changes with it.

I’ve only a few years remaining before I’m ready for retirement. I’ve thought a little about what that will look like, but I can’t predict how.

I’ll flow into that new container when I get to it, I guess.

Luke Plunkett has written a piece over on Aftermath that’s formatted as an open letter to small businesses using AI to advertise. It does not pull a lot of punches. Profanity is involved.

The article mentions other options that could have been explored, primarily hiring a local graphic designer and/or photographer. (Do you know you have local graphic designers and photographers? They’re everywhere!)

The response I get when I say something similar is that artists are too expensive, and my knee-jerk reaction is they’d rather lose a lot of customers than pay an artist what they’re worth. It’s an odd business choice, but it’s your business.

But this isn’t helpful. People who don’t have the money don’t have the money, and some small businesses are struggling a lot, especially right now.

Instead, I suggest people who can’t afford artists should do the unthinkable thing that’s older than AI (No, not art theft. The other unthinkable thing older than AI.):

They could just make it themselves.

Cameras are ubiquitous, they likely already have one on their phone and another built into their computer. You take a photo of your business, slap some text over it with a free, web-based editor, and call it a day.

Heck, you could manage this in a copy of MS Paint that was made before Copilot got integrated into it.

“But it won’t look nice,” they say. More frequently, I’m told “Oh, I’m no good at art.”

I have a 4 year art degree and close to 30 years experience teaching it. I say this so that you understand my next statement has some weight and authority behind it: Art that shows effort and interest was applied will always be better than “art” made by writing a prompt. Your “bad” art isn’t actually bad, and the AI “art” isn’t actually art.

(This knowledge is why I can honestly praise a 5 year old for their scribble drawing. At their skill level it’s an amazing accomplishment if their “circle” only has 7 corners. Heck, freehand circles are challenging for adults!)

Sure, the text might not be aligned professionally, and maybe your thumb is visible on the edge of the photo, and it looks like your favorite fonts are Comic Sans and Papyrus, but you know what? That work is yours, and those are mistakes that will be less common the next time you try.

AI art for a business says that not only will you not pay an artist, you don’t want artists to be your customers. Unskilled art says you’re still learning. Not everyone is kind to beginners, true, but they’re wrong for being unkind.

I’m not saying you have to abandon one job to pick up Graphic Design in order to avoid AI use. I’m saying the democratization of digital art creation happened decades ago, and you don’t need a slop factory to make something that’s good enough, so long as you’re willing to try.

So try.

Over on PetaPixel, Jaron Schneider just published a review of an external SSD. I don’t tend to read too many reviews of new gear mainly because I tend to buy it after it hasn’t been new for a year or more, but this did get me thinking how I store things.

Over the years I’ve gotten increasingly disillusioned with cloud storage services. It’s said that “The cloud is just someone else’s computer,” which is very much true unless you’re putting your own Network Accessible Storage out there on the internet. (I will not be going over how to do that, I’m happy with my NAS being Intranet only, thank you very much.)

So what happens when the cloud storage company decides to just delete your stuff? Yes, that’s happened. Recently, in fact.

(Saving you a click: Dropbox was likely using AI to scan accounts for illegal material and it allegedly incorrectly labeled an image of the user’s son riding a Roomba as something evil. No appeal, all content not backed up went poof.)

Meanwhile, I’m here telling my students to put all of their work in their school-issued Google Drives.

This year, I’m trying something different.

Well, mostly different. My district is heavily embedded in the Google ecosystem, if I try to throw that out the window too many things will break. I can still move a bit further away, though.

Teaching in a computer lab means we don’t have much of a supply list, but I’m adding a 16 GB or larger flash drive to it. That “or larger” is hopefully going to do some heavy lifting, but I think we can get by with 16 if we have to since we don’t do any 4k editing.

“But Aaron,” I ask myself, because I’m the only one here, “What about the families that can’t afford a flash drive with the current prices skyrocketing due to on-again-off-again tariffs and AI data centers hogging all available storage manufacturing?”

I’m glad I asked! In my regular trolling of Goodwill, I’ve amassed what’s effectively a class set of flash drives.

(My method for bringing costs down, if you’re interested in knowing, was to search for the word “lot” on ShopGoodwill.com. One thumb drive would be too expensive to ship, but every now and then someone tossed a dozen of them in a box to sell together for the exact same shipping cost.)

Ideally families will be getting their own, at larger sizes than 16GB, but if they can’t or don’t, I have some they can sign out in the same way a band student might get a school instrument.

(With the same punishment for losing/destroying it, because they’re not so cheap any more.)

These drives won’t be for everything; At that size, they can’t be. But they CAN be for current projects and commonly used files, at the very least. This will free up space on the lab computers (they’ve got 256GB each, not a lot by today’s standards) while also allowing me more flexibility with seating arrangements. I can move a student as needed and if their important work can’t move with them, they’ve been saving it in the wrong spot.

On top of that, they can take the flash drives home to get things done as well.

“But Aaron,” I hear me ask again, “Couldn’t they just back things up in Google Drive to manage the same thing?”

Well, yes, but that requires decent internet. My school has it, I can’t guarantee it for my students at home.

(If you listen to my students, internet outages are the primary reason assignments cannot be handed in after 11pm on the night they’re due. Or at least, that’s what the emails sent at 11:50pm tell me.)

My hope is this method will help them better understand file and folder structures, so they can move away from the “toss it all in Google Drive and find it later” strategy that has been hit or miss for some time now, especially with how raw photos and video files are not given rather descriptive names by their cameras.

And maybe, just maybe, I can get some of them to rely a little bit less on putting everything on someone else’s computer.

(Final note: It is not lost on me that my blog description now reads “Old man yells at cloud computing” and it still took 21 days into Blaugust for me to complain about cloud computing.)

The day after I typed perhaps a bit too much on saving money while getting into photography, Mathew Anderson on DP Review posts an article highlighting someone who’s taken things to an even greater extreme.

Now I do feel somewhat vindicated by seeing Gordon Pritchard, the subject of the article, lists the Nikon P950 (a Coolpix camera) as one of his personal favorites.

(The P950 is a newer model than what I tend to get so you’re looking at a cost, even used, that’s more than a lot of DSLRs and mirrorless cameras, but if you’ve no intention of swapping out lenses this is a good model.)

However the bag he uses … it’s a choice.

Does it work for him? Sure, and that’s what matters. I do not recommend that others do the same.

Ignoring the low durability and environmental impact, plastic bags have a tendency to generate electrical charges. I hesitate to put any electronics in a plastic bag, traditional or the kind you find in the produce section (the kind shown in a photo in the article).

This doesn’t mean I’m saying to spend money on a new, fancy camera bag, though. If you already have ANY kind of fabric bag, I’d go with that first. The best camera bag, just like the best camera, is the one you have on you.

If you’re lucky, you bought a used camera that came with a bag. I’ve had that happen a few times, but as much as I love ShopGoodwill.com I wouldn’t send you there to get a bag. Whatever you end up paying for one as the winning bid, you’ll likely pay more for shipping. I don’t consider that worth it.

My local Goodwills will usually have a shelf, stack, or in one specific location, pile of backpacks that are amazingly inexpensive.

Will these be ideally constructed to protect camera gear? No, but the ones that aren’t 100% plastic will be less prone to static buildup, easily carry a camera and related equipment, be more durable, and as they’re usually opaque, keep others from noticing it’s a camera you’re lugging around in there.

Perhaps you’ll get lucky and find a fancier bag built for camera use, but don’t sweat it if you don’t.

Just … maybe don’t use a grocery bag to carry a camera around.

It has been said that every hobby is a bottomless pit that one tries to fill with money, and there’s some truth to that. Even one of my favorite hobbies, Tabletop Role-playing Games, can be done with virtually no overhead using free rules and a dice rolling app on your phone, but don’t ask how much I spent on TTRPGs last year.

The saying seems particularly true for photography, to the point where Leonard Skapp has a whole article over on DIY Photography on how we got here and what we can do about it.

(Spoiler: Part of the problem is AI. Shocker, I know.)

I’m going to skip all of the reasons (Leonard Skapp does a thorough job, there), but suffice to say I’ve had a need for getting inexpensive cameras more often than most people.

As a digital media teacher I have the additional problem of not needing merely one camera, but enough so that students don’t need to share too much.

And then of course there’s students who want to take photos at home, because they actively enjoy the subject. They aren’t all independently wealthy, so how are they going to manage that?

Thrifting can be another bottomless pit hobby, and I’ve lost a few Saturday mornings learning this. It isn’t something I recommend (at least the way most people do it) because you’re going to use a lot of time and gas going from store to store for not a lot of reward. In this economy, you’ll burn all of your savings away on fuel costs.

As the gentleman behind the Farming While Beige YouTube Channel has pointed out on occasion, people who are strapped for cash are going to be working instead of using up their time trying to find the best deals.

The Simplest Solution

So here’s the baseline: If you have a phone with a camera, you don’t have to spend a dime. You can start taking photos now.

That’s it. There’s no price point that’s a minimum entry fee to become a photographer. If you take photos, you are one, and gatekeepers don’t get a say unless they’re drawing the line at AI use.

… Hm. You’re still here.

You probably want something more involved than a phone, then.

Bridging The Gap (Do you see what I did, there?)

OK, next step up from a phone is going to be a bridge camera. These are seen as the “in-between” models that bridge the gap (hence the name) between the more simplistic compact cameras and the more advanced DSLRs and mirrorless models.

If it looks like the lens isn’t detachable but the form factor won’t fit in your pocket, it’s a bridge camera.

They’re supposed to be priced between them, also, but with the high demand for “vintage” compacts and DSLRs being DSLRs, the prices for used bridge cameras are remarkably affordable.

Quick And Cheap: KEH

The first place I’d suggest trying is KEH.com. It’s not where I go, but I’m comfortable absorbing a little risk so that’ll be the next option further down.

KEH has a decent selection of compact and bridge cameras, though the cheapest cameras I’d say are “bridge” are included in their “compact” section. Remember to sort by “Ascending” price or you’re going to get some sticker shock.

A nice thing about this vendor is they also do repair work. If you’re buying something from them, it should darned well work.

Slower, But Possibly Cheaper: ShopGoodwill.com

If you’re looking for even cheaper prices but you’re willing to take on some risks, Go to ShopGoodwill.com’s camera section.

ShopGoodwill.com is nice because it’s like Ebay, but all of the sellers are Goodwill stores based around the US. I’ve been burned exactly once by a fraudulent listing on Ebay, that’s never happened with Goodwill.

The featured image above is a recent Goodwill find, in fact. It has a 16 megapixel sensor, 30x optical zoom, and while the microphones aren’t the best it’ll record the lower end of HD video. I paid $35, including shipping costs.

At this point when I’m looking for bridge cameras I specifically search for the Coolpix line. They have a good form factor, appear to be workhorses, and many of the older models can run off of 4 AA batteries. (I buy rechargeable Lithium batteries to keep the long-term costs down.)

I’ve still wasted money, there, but that can be avoided with a few ground rules.

The Rules of Acquisition Shopping Goodwill Online

1. Use the filters.
   At the time I’m writing this, the filters are over on the left hand side. Even if you only use them to limit your category and set a maximum price you’re willing to pay, this will save you a LOT of time and aggravation.
   
   Sometimes I’ll limit my search by adding Coolpix as a search term. There’s lots of good brands and models out there but I’ve had good luck with those and it limits my time spent browsing through entries.
2. Always check the shipping estimate.
   This isn’t Amazon Prime. I’ve found shipping for cameras tends to be around $15, so when you’re budgeting, assume you’re going to be paying your maximum bid PLUS another $15 on top of that. Even knowing this I’ve still occasionally gotten a bit of sticker shock at checkout.
   
   (Still worlds cheaper than buying new, though.)
   
   Occasionally you’ll find an item that’s local pickup only. It’ll be made clear that’s the case when you look at the shipping info, but in my haste I haven’t always done this. If you’re the winning bid and they’re not shipping it, your options are limited for how to resolve things.
3. Don’t overbid.
   As a personal rule I won’t bid more than $25 on a bridge camera or $50 on a DSLR or computer. You’d think this would keep things affordable, and there’s the problem.
   
   At those caps, I’m going to not win most auctions. This is fine, a lost auction costs me nothing and I can always bid again.
   
   But bidding doesn’t cost me anything, either, and it’s easy to bid on too many things with the hope that I’ll win one of them. That’s what happens if I’m lucky, but I could also end up having to pay for 20 more cameras at $25 each plus $15 for shipping. On a teacher’s salary, that hurts.
4. Look at the pictures, read the description.
   This sounds like it should be obvious, but there’s a non-zero chance that great deal you think you’re getting is for a non-working camera because you missed the “for parts” or “functionality not tested” text.
   
   When I’m buying bridge cameras for my classroom I specifically want the ones that run off AA batteries because of all the rechargeables I have in my lab. This usually isn’t mentioned in the description, but the photos might show the housing for that as well as if it looks like an alkaline battery ever leaked in there.
5. Step Away
   There can be an addictive nature to auctions, with bidding wars and such. When I’m in the market for something, I’ll check once every day or two, around the same time of day, and then close the darned tab. If I have enough active bids to feel uncomfortable I don’t look for more things. This might sound like common sense advice but sometimes one still needs a reminder.
   
   I’ll spend more time looking at the “Open Auctions” section, but that’s where things show up after I have the winning bid.

So there you go, all of my secrets for how I manage to supply my classroom for photography products on the cheap, without spending too much time doing it.

I don’t try to hide the fact that I use Linux as my OS of choice, but it’s not because I’m a rabid fan. It’s true what they say about it: “Linux would be the worst OS if it wasn’t for every other OS.”

So while I’m sitting back and relaxing using my ad-free, bloatware-free computing experience, I thought I’d list some things I dislike about the experience, limited to the traditional 5 but not necessarily placed in a particular order.

5: Hard-Coded Incompatibility

I figure I might as well start off with one of the major complaints about Linux: That so many things won’t work in it.

The truth is far less severe. Thanks to Wine and Valve’s work on Proton (which is Wine with more effort to get video games to run), if I can’t find a version of the software or a suitable replacement, I can usually still just run the Windows version on Linux.

Sure, Proton is meant for game compatibility, but I’ve gotten other software to run in it just fine. Even so, this usually isn’t much of an issue because there’s almost always something coded for Linux that is either a suitable replacement or, frequently, is the same software, made by the same programming team, but for Linux.

But this isn’t about what’s working. Some companies have hard-coded checks in place, and unless I have a full emulation setup (read: I open Windows in Linux so I’m running 2 operating systems for the price of … 2 operating systems) so that the software’s running in Windows anyway, it just won’t work.

This has only personally been a problem for me with one program: The software I use for my vinyl cutter. This isn’t enough to drag me back to Windows, but it’s annoying.

(Bonus complaint: Some web-based apps will do this as well, but for Chrome. Google Meet has no problems with audio or video in Firefox-based browsers, and yet some 3rd parties insist they can only access your camera and microphone if you’re using a Chrome-based browser. I fail to see how this is anything other than lazy programming when the stance is coming from a rather large company.)

4: Driver Compatibility

This is, again, a rare occurrence, but most of my troubleshooting on Linux, if measured in hours or frustration, has been spent solving this problem.

A lot of hardware just works when I plug it into a computer running Linux. I’ll have the occasional hiccup with Bluetooth, but no more than I did when I used Windows because the problem’s with Bluetooth, not the OS.

There’s two exceptions to this: The new and the niche.

I’ve rarely had the opportunity to install Linux on a freshly manufactured computer, but most of those times something failed to work. The drivers (bits of software that let the hardware talk to the rest of the software) might be out there, but not incorporated into the OS quite yet. Sometimes I’ll find a forum post where someone managed or discovered a workaround and I’ll install some hope-it’s-not-shady code with the terminal so *poof* now I have Wi-Fi on this new machine, but frequently, if I can afford to wait, the problem gets solved in a way where an update will come down the line without me having to do anything strenuous.

(I’m impatient, so waiting is not something I tend to do.)

And then there’s the niche products. Personally, I’ve encountered this with some older (before 2008) tablets and one specific portable USB monitor I picked up at a thrift store. Other devices in those categories will work just fine, but if there isn’t a programmer interested in getting it to run on Linux (or a company willing to pay a programmer to do this) then best case scenario I have something for someone else to use.

3: “Helpful” Instructions

While there’s a lot of incredible resources online for the novice Linux user, most are created/shared for free, by amateur enthusiasts.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and they’ve gotten me out of a jam multiple times (see #4 on this list), but a guide isn’t always written with the assumption that the target audience is a novice.

Or also possible: The author has a different bar for “novice,” and it’s higher than where the actual novice can reach.

On many occasions I’ve found a tutorial for solving an issue that listed step after step after step, with commands I could copy/paste into terminal, but then the whole thing didn’t work because there was something so obvious to the author they didn’t include it, but it was kind of necessary if you wanted a good result.

You know, the classic “Step 1, Step 2, ?????, Step 4” scenario, but the question marks weren’t even implied and Step 4 was labeled Step 3.

(And this is all from people who by all accounts legitimately want to be helpful. I’ve seen others complain about Linux gatekeepers but because I spend less time asking for help on forums than I spend looking for solved problems, I don’t tend to encounter as many of those. When I do see them, it’s because I scrolled past the response that included the solution.)

2: AI Slop

Here we go, the bane of my existence is coming for me even here, in my sanctuary.

One of the many aspects of artistic expression that is getting hit hard by prompt writers posing as creative geniuses is coding, and the advent of “vibe coders” legitimately thinking they’re being helpful by submitting code when they can’t explain how it works is putting a lot of extra strain on the people in charge of approving/denying proposed changes.

It’s not just that those approving the code have a lot more things to sift through, it’s also that the quality of what they have to examine is greatly reduced, with the people “writing” it unable to explain how it works.

If you don’t understand how it works, you’re not going to be able to maintain it. And no, “I’ll just ask an AI to maintain it” is not the solution. You don’t solve a slop problem by stirring the slop around a bit.

The whole thing is stressful enough to make some maintainers want to leave, and any time that happens the brain drain on a project can be intense.

Some projects are implementing “no AI code” policies, either as outright bans or at least limiting the AI assistance to changes that can be explained by the person submitting them to compensate for this.

You might think “Oh, well people will just lie about the AI stuff, then,” but unexplainable code is still unexplainable, and also the vibe coders seem to really like to brag about their lack of talent.

1: Less Than Progressive Personalities

I was very generous with the name for this section, but yeah, some of the heavy hitters in the Linux world are less than savory.

Let’s look at the GNU Licensed Image Manipulation Program, frequently touted as an excellent alternative to Adobe Photoshop for those who want to get out from that particular corporate entity’s subscription racket.

Thing is, almost no one calls it the “GNU Licensed Image Manipulation Program.” That’s what its acronym stands for, in theory, but it’s actually a “backronym,” where the person behind it really just wanted to name it after an abeleist slur they’d seen used in Pulp Fiction.

There’s alternatives to it (I really like Inkscape), but none of the actively maintained ones have the same feature parity. On a whole the FOSS community ignores that its name is a slur, isn’t aware, or begrudgingly uses it anyway because for what it does there isn’t a lot of good competition. Those who abandoned it for an alternative seem to be few and far between.

And then there’s Framework, which has made a name for itself as a computer company driven to make repairable laptops that you can build yourself. I really want to like Framework, and I want to see other companies trying to compete with them to bring the cost of repairable computers down.

And then they went and gave money to a right-wing extremist. When confronted, their CEO said they’re trying to maintain a “big tent.”

There was some initial push-back about this, but outside of a few vocal pockets this seems to have completely died out. Those who care enough will likely not buy Framework again (if ever). Those who care but not as much as having a repairable laptop when there’s practically no competitors in that niche will silently keep buying Framework. Everyone else decided it was a non-issue or got very, very vocal in support of right-wing extremists.

Do I think this is typical of all Linux users? Of course not, but it bothers me that any percentage of them are like this and that good alternatives to what they provide aren’t readily available.

Gardiner Bryant is one of several people rejoicing over Linux making up roughly 10% of the current North American market. (YouTube version here.)

Insert here the general caveat that how OS usage is measured can vary greatly depending on who’s doing the measuring and how they’re doing it, but 10% is generally where I’d expect to see MacOS firmly entrenched.

Naturally, this is cause to bicker and argue.

TechSpot spends some time pointing out that sure, it’s a bump, but we don’t know why. (I have some guesses.)

PCWorld and a few other places are insisting that the 10% market share doesn’t count, because Cloudflare’s data paints a much different picture.

I’m again going to point out that it’s not just the numbers, but who’s measuring them.

I’ll also reiterate that one shouldn’t tie their identity around a single thing. As much as I prefer Linux to other operating systems, it’s not because Linux is amazing; It’s because the others have gotten so much worse.

(You just need to hear a Linux fan get upset to know no one hates Linux as much as a Linux user. We’d switch if there was something better.)

But at 10% or 5%, Linux has still been progressively hitting better numbers as more people get tired of the mess that is Windows. MacOS is better, but comes with its own problems as Apple works to thwart “Right to Repair” and make things proprietary where they can.

And as people get frustrated and reach for something else, many of them are finding that the penguin-themed OS isn’t the terminal-only kind-of-works-if-you-customize-everything hot mess that it was 20 years ago.

I mean … it still can be, if that’s what you want, but that’s a niche I’m not in.

Years ago, when my lab was full of aging computers and there was no funding in sight, I took the plunge and got some Raspberry Pi computers. Those tiny little boards were so underpowered, but they worked well enough for my students to get some work done.

I’d used Linux before, even daily driving it on a Netbook @ 2009, but this was my first time managing it for my students and for the most part they didn’t care.

Some even preferred it.

Very quickly, I learned that it was cheaper to get a used computer from a thrift store. If I got a laptop it would often have more RAM, a larger hard drive, and a built-in monitor. These wouldn’t run the Raspbian OS (a specific flavor of Linux made specifically for Raspberry Pis) I’d been using, but my practice there made installing and maintaining Linux Mint much more efficient.

Again, my students didn’t care. Many barely noticed.

My Kindergarten students, enamored with Tux Paint, Tux Math, and Tux Typing, thrived.

Last year, when my family were sharing Christmas wish lists, my kid sister said she wanted a computer that “wouldn’t give her sass.” She expected some advice from me, given my job description, so she laid out her use cases.

Instead of bringing her a recommendation, I brought her a laptop. It was far from new and would be considered underpowered by modern standards, but it had Linux Mint and a few software options that met her use cases. I spent maybe 10 minutes giving her an overview of how it worked compared to Windows and Mac.

My sister’s a mother of two, she doesn’t have time to make computers be a full time hobby, but not once has she complained about it. It works. It does what it needs to do. It doesn’t give her “sass” like she expects from other devices.

If my sister and my 5 year old students can manage Linux, it’s no longer too hard for the average person.

But don’t just take my word for it, give it a test drive. It’s best if you try it out on an older device. If you have a computer from 2010 or later that’s collecting dust because you bought a new one, that’s an ideal candidate for a first attempt. Not because you’re likely to screw things up, but because you’ll be less afraid to do that.

You might find that using a computer isn’t as bad as some companies expect you to assume.

Emanuel Maiberg has an article on 404 Media that tells the tale of Microsoft saying “No, not like that!” after insisting that their employees should all be diving head-first into the slop-fest that is AI.

It turns out that AI use can get expensive, and when you expect those under you to use the expensive things more and more, you start realizing how wasteful that is.

One could draw parallels to school level high-stakes testing. We talk a lot about “teaching to the test” like it’s a bad thing, but very little is done about it because those tests are how we measure student success.

If those in charge (we’re talking politicians and those appointed by them, here) thought teaching to the test was actually bad, they wouldn’t make the test so darned important.

In a recent post on this very site, I mentioned that until recently the big event for digital media arts programs in my district is a district-wide Film Festival. It’s still seen as the biggest thing, with more pomp and circumstance pumped into that than most events.

This, in spite of the push to cover the other aspects of digital media covered in our curriculum. It’s slow going, in part, I think, because the big prize is for video production, not the other things.

We have other awards, now, an I welcome the improvements. Inertia’s a pain sometimes, though.

I think about stuff like this when I’m writing my rubrics. What’s that particular project’s big thing? If that’s not the part getting most of the instructional time, why not?

And if I don’t like the results I’m getting, what do I need to change? How much needs to be changed, and how do I present those changes to my students?

Kate Garibaldi has an article over on PetaPixel covering custom lens caps for cameras so any time the camera’s out but not in use you’re carrying around a tiny billboard.

My knee-jerk reaction was of course “Thanks, I hate it” because I don’t like the idea of tying my identity to a brand or product, but the article wasn’t about selling ad space to companies so much as it was promoting self-branding, and now there’s a company that prints custom images on lens caps.

I think this is neat, but not because I intend to use this service. (I’m on a teacher budget, after all, and I’m buying enough things for my classroom.)

Branding is, unfortunately, everywhere. Our lens caps already have manufacturer logos on them, as do the cameras, monitors, computers, keyboards, mice, and I’m going to stop the list here. This was particularly “fun” when our rules for our district level Film Festival forbade any trademarked logos from being shown on-camera.

(Things are a bit more relaxed, now, but a lot of the tech from back then still has tape over the marketing, because it was more efficient to use a bit of tape once than to apply a blur effect to each shot.)

Here’s the thing: Our classes can have their own branding. Most schools have mascots and logos already. My department has a district-wide logo used on all of our press releases and event signage. On the school level, I design a new variation each year and we silkscreen t-shirts for the students.

(I also cut a lot of vinyl stickers with my Cricut, though I won’t recommend that brand due to my experiences.)

Having branding for your classroom can help to promote a group identity, and while practice makes the act of logo creation easier, one doesn’t need a lot of skill to get started.

“But Aaron,” you say, “I’m no good at art, how could I manage to do this?”

I have students making logos as young as 3rd Grade with a simple web-based vector editor. They take an image and add some words to it. Done.

“But Aaron, it’s not going to POP without a cool graphic, and I’ve no skill with making those!”

(H&R Block couldn’t manage it either, you’ll be fine.)

Go to OpenClipArt.org and search for your school mascot or something that relates to your content area. (I’ll often look for a camera or microphone.) Grab one with high contrast that doesn’t look like slop. You lose a lot of respect if your image looks like slop.

“But Aaron, how do I get this to be ON things?”

This one’s trickier. You could go my route and use a vinyl cutter, though your image will have to be monocolor a free of floating objects. (Floating objects are parts of the design that are not physically attached to the rest of it, so they require additional effort to place correctly after you peel off the backing.)

Me, I like that challenge, but not everyone does.

If you have access to a printer, printer-friendly sticker paper has been around for decades. In a pinch you can use address labels. Being pre-cut is a bonus, though you’re stuck with those dimensions. Visit your office supply store of choice and look for “sticker paper.” You’ll find options.

Now if you don’t mind, I have some stickers to cut out.

Ars Technica recently reported on Mexico’s largest university doing a completely remote entrance exam, and the disaster that resulted from it.

I won’t be using this to rant about AI, though the anti-cheat cameras were “AI powered.” I won’t be using this to rant about anti-cheat lockdown procedures either, though I’m also not a fan of those.

Neither of those would be needed if we didn’t still rely on high-stakes testing as a measure for student aptitude and accomplishment.

Now I’m not opposed to the occasional quiz. More often is better, because one off day can be balanced out by the rest. If done well, quizzes can even be used as tools for reinforcing the information students need to know.

But the big chunks of a student’s assessment should be evaluated by looking at what they can do, and I’m not going to get that by looking at how often they picked the right answer out of four possible options.

Show me a movie they made, an image they painted, a book they wrote, a business they planned, a robot they built, or anything other than a series of A, B, C, and D answers.

There’s a reason why some colleges have stopped caring about SAT scores, and it might be related to the reason why there’s no peer reviewed evidence showing a correlation between high test scores and success after school. (I vaguely remember Pearson publishing a study on their website that showed it, but their bias alone would probably prevent it from getting through peer review.)

If there’s one thing the SAT is known to show, it’s how wealthy the students’ parents are.

But we still use them, because, and say it with me, now: “We’ve always done it this way.“

And of course we have.

Multiple choice questions are easy to grade. Easier, now that we can have computers do it for us, but I’m old enough to remember Scantrons and hand grading.

We picked the easy over the good, because we have so many other things we’re told to get done and, quite frankly, grading tests is tedious.

(I will not segue into complaining about AI here, but I want you to know there was effort involved in that decision.)

There’s so much more value and reward in seeing students make something. It can still be graded objectively, you just need a rubric.

What amazes me is how many teachers don’t even know how easy rubric grading can be. They’re taught the test and then told to teach to it. I don’t have an article to link for that one, but I recall my days as a traveling art teacher where the principal specifically asked me to show sample rubrics to the teachers in her building because the teachers didn’t know how to use them.

The Better Way: Rubrics

When I’m making a rubric, I ask a simple question: “What do I want the student to accomplish with this specific project?”

We’re not talking a course-long activity here, we’re frequently looking at a single day’s worth of work (maximum 2 weeks, for my older students).

This is where my ADHD comes into play. I’m going to have a short list, because if I start getting distracted while writing it there’s no way I should expect a student to focus through the whole list.

The result is going to be 3-5 things I want their work to include. My youngest students might only have 3 “look-fors,” and even the older students are usually going to have 4. Point values may or may not be distributed evenly, depending on what I want valued.

My older students, for example, will usually have a list of 4 requirements, each worth 25% of their grade. In the beginning of the year my youngest students might instead have a ranked list of scenarios, where managing to log into the computer without help gets them most of the way to an A.

“When the ink was still wet on my certification I sometimes made a list of 10 things I needed to see. Granted, I was teaching high school at the time, but that was still a lot to get done. I like my current method much more.

“But Aaron,” you might ask, “How do I make sure they know everything the test checks in Chapter 5 of the math textbook?”

Great question.

How do you know they’ll remember any of that the day after the test?

My students don’t forget how to make movies, because it’s interesting and compelling enough that the knowledge sticks with them. If I have them make a movie covering a math concept they might not memorize a whole chapter, but they’ll be more likely to have that part down.

Now have the rest of the class make videos about the other sections in that chapter.

Have everyone in the class critique each other’s videos. Give them the rubric, and ask for positive and constructive feedback.

I do this in my classroom. The Critique Days count as an assessment score. My classes aren’t small enough for everyone to watch everything in one day, so I limit them to 10 critiques, with any extras as extra credit.

(I sort them alphabetically by student name and have every student start with their own video, so ideally no two students are grading the exact same list of videos.)

If you want to be really daring, you can average the scores the students give together and have that be a portion of the grade. Reserve the right to override the result, though. I’ve found my students collectively tend to be on the mark for a lot of things but every now and then a misunderstanding results in what would result in an unfairly low grade without me correcting things.

(I’m not the only voice in my classroom, but I reserve the right to be the loudest one.)

So, yeah, ditch high stakes tests. They’re bad. The people who make us have to use them should feel bad for doing so. Assign a project. Use a rubric. Everyone’s going to have a lot more fun learning that way.

Ewen Bell is an Australian professional photographer who appeared on my radar last year when I started spending more time on PeerTube, though he has a podcast and a YouTube presence as well.

His recent video, A Long Chat About Learning The Art of Photography (Here’s the YT link, if you prefer that.), is true to its name and gives an overview of a lot of the things you may want to consider if you want to get into photography.

Given the same responsibility I wouldn’t stress all the things he does in the same amount, but if photography’s a hobby you’re thinking of diving into, there’s far worse places to start.

Mr. Bell spends a significant amount of time talking about types of gear you can use, and makes a point of bringing up phone cameras.

After all, most of us have them, they’re decent enough these days, and they fit in our pockets! Why not use them for the hobby?

There’s a saying among a lot of photographers: The best camera is the one you have on you. If what you have is a phone, that works. You can lament not having the $30k DSLR with a lens that needs its own insurance policy, or you can take a photo.

My students don’t have phones. Last year we started a school-wide phone ban, and suddenly they had to rely on lab equipment.

We’ve a mix of cameras, with low end but modern DSLRs, ancient but serviceable DSLRs, a handful of compact cameras, and a growing collection of bridge cameras. Because my classroom projects involve a lot of student choice, I have to ask students what they’re working on when they want to borrow a camera.

Someone trying to take photos of silhouettes is more likely to need a DSLR than someone trying to demonstrate an understanding of the Rule of Thirds, for example.

For myself, I’ve barely touched my DSLR since Summer Break started. I love it, and enjoy when there’s a good reason to use it, but it has a lot of settings to manage.

Don’t get me wrong, that’s why I bought it. I WANT it to have those settings. The downside is that when I’m using it, I’m in the mindset that has me thinking about those settings, trying to get the best photo possible.

That’s great for the results, but lousy for being THERE. I’m doing a job with the camera, not soaking in the moment.

This summer, I’ve had a few opportunities to go places and see things. Most of these involved family who live across a state border. I didn’t bring my DSLR, I brought my Camp Snap Pro.

(This isn’t an ad for Camp Snap. There’s other cameras that can fit the niche of being a compact camera built to take photos but not distract you while you use it to take photos. Some of them do a better job, some are worse. It just so happens that Camp Snap is the one I’ve been using.)

My phone will take a better photo. It has a bigger sensor (not by much), better lenses, and a not insignificant amount of software that tries to clean things up before I even see what I took, but I don’t trust it. The more my phone does to make my pictures pretty, the less the photo can be called my own.

The draw for using my phone is convenience – it’s the best camera if I have no other camera at hand.

The draw for the Camp Snap and others like it is it’s simple enough to be cheap and not a distraction from the life experiences you’re documenting.

The draw for a DSLR (or mirrorless) camera is the significant control you get over everything.

Mr. Bell spends most of his time talking about DSLR/mirrorless gear, because that’s seen as the end goal. If you’re a professional or serious hobbyist, that’s where you’re going to go, and for the most part he’s not wrong.

There’s something to be said for other paths, though. I don’t wave a finger at someone using a phone to take a photo.

I might make a face at someone using a DSLR on the Auto setting, but that’s just force of habit.