Memes for Good, not Evil

The lesson for this 8th grade Topics in Media and Technology class was modified from Dave Baroody's Medieval Memes lesson, and the KQED How to Make a Meme video.

I started class by showing students a meme, and I asked them to tell me how memes work. After they had done that, I explained to them that the walls in my room were bare, and I wanted to make my room the most welcoming room ever. But, I told them, I didn't just mean, "Welcome to tech class." I meant, "You are welcome in this room, and it is a safe space."

They didn't quite get it at first (the first class gave me a lot of memes that had a message of, "Welcome to tech class. Tech class is fun." After the first group of students, I had each class generate a list of identity markers for which people are sometimes excluded, mocked, or ostracized. The lists tended to include socio-economic status, race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, interests. After making the lists, I explained to the students that I wanted the message of welcome to say, regardless of identity marker, you are safe here. 

Then, we talked about text/subtext, the relationship of the words to the picture, the concept of setup on the top line and payoff on the bottom line, and most importantly:

Remember that memes are meant to be funny . . . Annnnnnd these memes also need to be welcoming and kind . . . Annnnnnnd that's the challenge.

We watched the KQED video as a class, and then students worked in groups of 1, 2, or 3 to make memes.

I had students save their memes as jpgs to a shared Google folder as they completed them, and I projected the folder on the board, so they could see other people's memes as they were created. In each class, the memes started off pretty not-so-great, and then got better and better as students worked on them and saw each others' creations. It was an active learning process for students to be thinking about how welcoming or not welcoming a message might be and how the person in the image was being positioned.

At the end of class, we took a few minutes to debrief as we looked at each others' memes. Almost every student commented on the fact that it was really hard to be funny and kind at the same time. We talked about how this was hard work, and about how we often don't consider how people are being positioned when we make and share things online.

Annnd phew. Because that's why were were doing the lesson.

One last note: I put this caveat (taken from David Baroody) on the moodle site and shared it verbally as well:

Why would I give you an assignment where I knew you might run into material that may be deemed inappropriate? It is NOT because I am trying to corrupt you!
As a citizen of the digital world, you need to realize that the internet is an ENORMOUS place, and that inappropriate content, information, and individuals are out there.
More important than just realizing it's there, though, you need to understand how to protect yourself and others from images, links, and other content in which you (or others) do not wish you to engage. As an educator who employs an increasingly large amount of digital technology, I would rather have an open discussion about this with you, your peers, and your parents than ignore the issue.
If you are interested in some of the theory behind digital citizenship, please look over the Nine Elements of Digital Citizenship here.

How Do We Really Get to Know Our Students? iMovie!

Because all of Ms. Bo's students are new to the middle school, Ms. Bo knows that helping them to feel known is key to a successful start. So, the first unit of Ms. Bo's history class investigates primary sources. The class talks about the ways their identities impact their understanding of history, and they talk about the fact that they are the best sources for information about themselves.

In the past, Ms. Bo has had each student create a collage that demonstrates investigation into the source that is their self. Then, the students write an 8-10 sentence paragraph about the collage and the interpretation of their self.

This year, Ms. Bo decided to incorporate iMovie as a digital collage, so I had the chance to collaborate with her. To keep the project manageable, we came up with this list of criteria that we shared with the students as a Google Doc:

We asked for one minute so it was easy to share, and we had students stick to pictures they took and stock music and sound because we didn't want to compound what they needed to know about citation for the project. Since each student had a computer with iMovie already, we didn't have to worry about access, but Ms. Bo made sure to schedule plenty of in-class time to work so she could identify potential hiccups students had with using the program.

When Ms. Bo introduced the project, she first asked the students what you need to make a movie. The students shouted out ideas like a script, actors, scenery, music. Ms. Bo pointed out that they had a script: the paragraph they had already completed, and they had an actor: themselves, and they had scenery: the music. Then, I did a mini-lesson on how to use iMovie, and we let them work. We posted the instructions to Moodle as well:

The students had a lot of questions about whose picture they could use - they REALLY wanted to use photos from the internet. They also REALLY wanted to use copyrighted music. We stuck with no.

When the students went home to work on the projects, they sent Ms. Bo a lot of alarmed emails about the project, which surprised us because in class, they had seemed so on top of it. The next day, in class, it turned out that the students completely had the hang of using iMovie. We weren't entirely sure why they panicked . . . maybe because it was new to them and they were still adjusting to the middle school?

To complete the project, Ms. Bo had each student show their movie, one after another. She used the expectations as her assessment rubric, and graded them as the students showed the movies. Sitting in the classroom, listening to the students say, "Awwww!" and, "I love horses, too!" was amazing. All the students' personalities piled up on top of each other, and you could feel the group coming together as a class that cared about their classmates because each one was known. 

I thought about including some samples of the videos, but then I thought about how personal each one was. Even though the students gave me permission to share their work, I didn't want to publish videos with that much personal information. That said, here's a photo of students watching the videos during class: