I’ve had the enormous pleasure of having to go into London two days running! “Pleasure?!”, you say. “What? With all those people?” Definitely. In fact, it’s partly ‘all those people’ that make it a pleasure. That, the architecture, the general buzz. I’m definitely with Samuel Johnson on this one:

Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.

Which is partly why I always carry a camera around with me. As I explained in Pictures as stimuli, pictures can act as, erm, stimuli. You should always carry a camera of some sort around you, and so should the kids you teach. Oh wait, yes, many of them probably have mobile phones that can take photos and video. Fantastic!

So, as I say, the last couple of days I’ve been in London, hence I took some photos, and here are seven of them. I think each is interesting in its own right. (They are also interesting as a set!) There are stories behind each of them – and some of these stories we may never know (I’m thinking of the people on the escalators). At least one (the Litchtenstein poster) is a predictor of a future event.

I think these photos, or ones like them, could be used in several contexts. Think, for example, about how “Inside the Machine” might be used in English, or Maths, or Science, or Computer Programming, or even in History. I believe that the power of photos to stimulate thinking and ideas makes it entirely feasible and eminently desirable for every teacher to have a digital camera of some sort. Every class should have access to a set of cameras of the pupils/students to use. In fact, having ‘access’ to them isn’t enough: they should have them. Full stop.

All the more reason for schools to have a Bring Your Own Device or other mobile technology programme methinks!

Litchtenstein