Media Literacy

Four Out of Five Kids Surveyed: Conducting a Survey and Creating a Web Page

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Surveys make wonderful projects for a number of reasons:

Recommended Time: 

If your kids are already familiar with digital photography, you can probably complete a simple, warm-up version of this project in one hour-long session or two 30-minute sessions. If you are still introducing the software, however, plan on working on the various elements of this project for 15 to 30 minutes a day over a week or more. A more extended version of the project with a broader survey base might take longer.

Goals: 

    • To teach kids about surveys
    • To help kids meet people in their community
    • To introduce or practice photography, photo-editing or Web-authoring skills, as desired
    • To help kids research an inquiry-based project

You Oughta Be in Pictures: An Introduction to Making Videos

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Imagine saying to your students, "Let's make a TV show or music video!"

Few projects can engage children like video projects. They're fun, and what could be more gratifying for a child than to see his or her name rolling in the credits, just like in a movie?

Recommended Time: 

Plan on working on the various elements of this project for about 30 minutes per day over several weeks. Break it up into modules that make sense for your program schedule and the age of your kids. Younger children will require more time with modeling and practicing various segments.

Goals: 
    • To teach kids about simple video production techniques
    • To explore storytelling in more depth
    • To learn basic photography skills.

Teaching Digital Photography: Showing Kids How to See With the Camera's Eye

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Photography is not just about pointing and pressing a button; it's a decision-making process. One of the best reasons for working photography into your activities and projects is that it helps kids better understand the media images they're bombarded with every day.

Look Who's Talking: An Image Editing Activity

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This activity offers a good framework for introducing and working with image-editing programs. In it, kids work in pairs to take pictures of two people, import them into a photo-editing application like PhotoShop, and combine them to create an image of the two people talking to each other with comic book-style word balloons.

Recommended Time: 

If you're using this activity to introduce photo editing for the first time, we recommend spending 15 to 30 minutes per day over several sessions, introducing two or three tools or techniques each day. You could, however, try it in a single session because only a few tools are needed.

By approaching it in a staged manner, however, as described in teaching about technology, kids will be able to digest each technique better and will have more time to explore on their own. The number of sessions you use is up to you and will be based on how many tools you want to introduce with this one activity. Just be sure to structure each session so that the kids can see a material advancement in their work at the end of each period.

Goals: 
    • To introduce or advance basic skills in using image manipulation software
    • To encourage kids' creativity and their exploration of computer software
    • To reinforce children's understanding of media literacy concepts: that images can be altered, that what we see in pictures can affect our perceptions, etc.
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