Teacher resources » Create your digital self
Overview
Launch a digital or media arts project by having your students create a digital journal or video blog (vlog) to capture their experiences, their hobbies, or their passions.
In this activity students get practice making a vlog, or a digital journal in which they tell the world about a topic of their (or your) choosing. Journaling is a powerful way to open up students to reflection activities and allows them to choose the content of that reflection. Using digital journaling injects a creative energy into the reflection process and provides for a different way for students to share themselves and their thoughts with others.
Integrate this activity into a student passion project, a project based learning experience or a class project on website design or multimedia.
Keywords: Digital literacy, Information Literacy, ELA, Media Arts
Good for: Individual work or teams
Grade level: K-12
Skill level: Intermediate
Student Instructions
Copy and paste the information below directly into the description box when creating your student assignment, or, use it as inspiration to make your own!
Create a video or a series of videos that acts like a digital journal! Take your classmates into your home, into your hobbies or passions, or just share what a day in your life looks like. This can be anything you choose from cooking to sports to making or gaming.
You can prepare a script for voiceover or simply use the dialogue you capture in your footage. Once you have captured all of the footage you want to use for your video blog, upload it into your media and begin editing. Cut out what you don’t need and remember to use editing features such as text, titles, and audio to give your audience a more immersive experience.
Tips to help your instruction in this activity or help to get you started!
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This project doesn’t have to be used simply to support a media arts or digital literacy project on website creation and design. Use this project as part of a digital portfolio or a digital journal to give students a chance to highlight something they really enjoy or to provide moments of reflection in a more informal way.
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Integrate this activity into an existing unit or project based learning project where video reflection can be a major part of the experience.
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If you are new to projects of this type, have your students produce vlogs on a book, science concept, or history lesson. It's a great way for students to share their thinking on a topic in a creative way.
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English/Language Arts: This activity fits well with many speaking and listening standards in English-Language Arts. Integrate a web design project and video blog series into a book review or fan fiction project or use it to enhance the writing experience for students as they turn expository or opinion pieces into engaging videos.
Social Sciences: Similar to how you can integrate this activity into your ELA classroom, integrating web design or video blogs into the social sciences or history environments works the same way, enhancing expository writing or historical interest pieces.
Media Arts: Website design may be thought of as a niche content area in formal education, but it doesn’t have to be! While media arts may exist as an elective in some schools, most educators who want to innovate in their classrooms must integrate activities like web design into their daily subject areas. This video blogging activity is a great bridge for bringing media arts and creative arts into any subject matter discipline.
Digital Literacy: Using this activity to teach digital literacy helps students understand how technology and media are used to craft messages for specific audiences. Allowing students to become producers of media content through video blogging, rather than simply consumers of video blogs provides an opportunity for students to not only direct their learning but gain an understanding of their own media consumption.