EDUCATING THE PEOPLE AS A DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHER AND CAMERA OPERATOR VIA OPEN EDUCATION SYSTEM STUDIES FROM TURKEY: Anadolu University Open Education Faculty Case

Today, Photography and visual arts are very important in our modern life. Especially for the mass communication, the visual images and visual arts have very big importance. In modern societies, people must have knowledge about the visual things, such as photographs, cartoons, drawings, typography, etc. Briefly, the people need education on visual literacy. In today's world, most of the people in the world have a digital camera for photography or video image. But it is not possible to give people, visual literacy education in classic school system. But the camera users need a teaching medium for using their cameras effectively. So they are trying to use internet opportunities, some internet websites and pages as an information source. But as the well known problem, not all the websites give the correct learning or know-how on internet. There are a lot of mistakes and false information. Because of the reasons given above, Anadolu University Open Education Faculty is starting a new education system to educate people as a digital photographer and camera person in 2009. This program has very importance as a case study. The language of photography and digital technology is in English. Of course, not all the camera users understand English language. So, owing to this program, most of the camera users and especially people who is working as an operator in studios will learn a lot of things on photography, digital technology and camera systems. On the other hand, these people will learn about composition, visual image's history etc. Because of these reasons, this program is very important especially for developing countries. This paper will try to discuss this subject.