This post was editted by Andrea Cabral on Jan, 2009
This ImageJ lesson was designed as an introduction for Grade 5 students. The goal was to have them understand the basic workings of the program. Opening images, stacking, and animation. We then proceeded to measuring and kept that very simple.I wanted students to see the connection between shadows and telling time. Using the lengths of shadows we will connect the information to Excel and make graphs related to our discoveries. You will see the photos taken, too. My extension activity will be to photograph growth of plants and/or stages of a life cycle (butterfly or frog) and incorporate all DataTools learned. *end-of-year culminating activity

This sounds like a great activity.
My 8th graders loved using ImageJ and several asked how they could download the program to use at home.

This looks like a great 5th grade application of Image J. I love the flexibility of scale that you can use with this program and that it is free to download.

This is a really interesting idea and lesson. My kids calculate the circumference of the Earth using GPS...maybe they can model Eratosthenes' method using photos and shadows, too. You've given me lots to think about! Thanks!

Nice activity to do when we start school in the fall or just after MCAS testing in May when the weather is better and the kids need a good stretch and out of school activity. Some fun collecting pictures of shadows.

This looks like an interesting and fun activity. My 6th grade students would enjoy it too.

This is a great introduction to Image J. Another approach to make some correlations of shadow length and seasons would be to find (or make) a fixed shadow maker (flag pole, basketball hoop, peace pole) and photograph that over the year always at the same time of day, if you chose local noon you could confirm the solstices and equinoxes, and latitude of your site
using image j to measure the shadows and excel to graph the data. Looks like fun.
-Bob Elliott

What a great way to use Image J! It would be fun to compare results at different times of the year. The kids would love this.

Thanks to all of you for the feedback--We are in the middle of revisiting this activity because the position of the sun has changed and we will do our comparisons. The kids really loved this and will apply this technology to our plants and animals unit after March/April ELA MCAS. To finish out the school year. This technology has really helped me in my new position this year since there are NO sets of books for 3 of the 5 units I need to cover. I used the tech. as a way to fill the gaps and the best part was it was FREE! and kids friendly. Thanks to all the DataTools people and colleagues for the support throughout this learning adventure. Look for our results early March.