{"id":879,"date":"2009-07-26T15:17:20","date_gmt":"2009-07-26T19:17:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/?p=879"},"modified":"2009-07-26T15:17:20","modified_gmt":"2009-07-26T19:17:20","slug":"polaroid-education-programs-credit-where-due","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/2009\/07\/26\/polaroid-education-programs-credit-where-due\/","title":{"rendered":"Polaroid Education Programs: Credit Where Due"},"content":{"rendered":"

Response to my initial post on Polaroid’s discontinuance of some popular products led to subsequent posts (and extensive commenting) on several other aspects of Polaroid’s significant impact on the field: the uncertain future of the Polaroid Collections, and Polaroid’s Artist Support Programs. You’ll find links to all of these at the end of this post.<\/p>\n

\"Polaroid<\/a>

Polaroid Teachers' T-Shirt<\/p><\/div>\n

Now I add yet another, this one devoted to the Polaroid Education Program<\/a>. Aside from serving on a consultancy panel with Chris Enos and others in the 1980s \u2014 created by Polaroid as a think tank for the program’s possibilities \u2014 I had no involvement with the education program. So I don’t have much to contribute to any discussion of this initiative, in terms of direct personal experience.<\/p>\n

However,\u00a0I do have an ongoing interest in the general area of photo education, having observed and commented on that corner of the field since beginning my own work in the late 1960s. That interest includes a particular concern with K-12 photo education, a crucial but much-neglected area. (Indeed, in spring 2006 webmaster John Alley and I inaugurated The New Eyes Project<\/a>, an online resource intended to serve all those involved in K-12 photography education: teachers, students, program directors, sponsors, arts-education theorists, and anyone else interested in teaching photography to young people around the world.)<\/p>\n

\"Polaroid<\/a>

Polaroid Teachers' T-Shirt Message<\/p><\/div>\n

Because I know many people who teach photography at all levels, from K-12 through post-secondary, I heard a lot of stories about Polaroid’s support for teachers and students over the decades. The Polaroid Corporation gave away tons (literally) of free film to teachers, particularly those teaching kids in K-12 programs in schools and in after-school\/alternative programs. The company also lent and often donated cameras (especially SX-70s) to such programs. They offered workshops for K-12 teachers in how to use photography (and especially instant photography) in teaching different subject areas within their curricula. They published a substantial workbook filled with ideas and assignments. They gave away free subscriptions for teachers to their in-house journal, the handsome Polaroid Close-Up<\/em> (edited by Constance Sullivan),\u00a0and then created the Polaroid Newsletter for Photographic\u00a0Education<\/em> (edited by Jim Stone<\/a>)\u00a0specifically to serve that constituency. (I published several articles therein.)<\/p>\n

\"Polaroid

Polaroid Close-Up No. 1, April 1983<\/p><\/div>\n

This education program ran parallel to the Polaroid Artist Support program, and some people participated in both \u2014 meaning that some of those who got Polaroid support for their teaching activities also got Polaroid’s help with the production of their own work. Still, it makes sense to me to open this up as a separate post with its own Comments thread. When a company makes a substantial contribution to the field of photo education we need to acknowledge that fact, and applaud it.<\/p>\n

\"Polaroid

Polaroid One-Step 600 camera<\/p><\/div>\n

At the moment, the only trace of this program that I find at the Polaroid Corporation website<\/a> is a page with links to several dozen classroom assignments and projects that use Polaroid materials, plus chapter-by-chapter PDF downloads of Polaroid’s Visual Learning Newsletter<\/a> and\u00a0\u00a0two workbooks:
\nMy Learn, Grow, and Know Activity Book, by Sheila Ellison<\/a>, and Reading Words & Images: Photographic Solutions for Visual Literacy, by Phillip Seymour<\/a>. If these interest you, I advise downloading them now; with the parent company in flux, there’s no telling how long they’ll stay online. Nor can we know how the leaner, meaner Polaroid Corporation that will arise from the ashes of the old at the end of this reconstructtion will approach its relationship to the photo-education community specifically and the education community as a whole.<\/p>\n

\"Reading

Reading Words & Images, by Phillip Seymour<\/p><\/div>\n

Whenever the Polaroid Corporation emerges from its current legal limbo and starts to reconfigure its outreach to various constituencies, public recognition of its service to the education field can only encourage it to consider re-starting and\/or continuing such programs. So here’s a discussion space for those who were involved in those programs, either as recipients of this beneficence \u00a0or as facilitators of Polaroid\u2019s generosity, as well as for anyone else with something useful to contribute.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

For an index of links to all posts related to this story,\u00a0click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Polaroid Corporation gave away tons (literally) of free film to teachers, particularly those teaching kids in K-12 programs in schools and in after-school\/alternative programs. The company also lent and often donated cameras (especially SX-70s) to such programs. They offered workshops for K-12 teachers in how to use photography (and especially instant photography) in teaching different subject areas within their curricula. They published a substantial workbook filled with ideas and assignments. . . . […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18,1],"tags":[127,1136,429,542],"class_list":["post-879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photo-education","category-uncategorized","tag-corporate-support","tag-photo-education","tag-polaroid","tag-visual-literacy","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}