Planet Poster Projects For Media Literacy

The following is a guest post by Sarah Montplaisir, a technology and media literacy specialist at Elk River Area School District’s Westwood Elementary in Zimmerman, MN. Her goal is to inspire kids to create with technology, empower students to find answers to their questions, and help kids find the books that they’ll love to read. Check out her website & twitter for more great ideas: readmekids.com and @WestwoodMedia1

As a part of our technology and media literacy course, we work with our students to meet research, creativity, and technology standards (see the ISTE standards met in the project below). After our students researched one of the planets in our solar system, we showed our kids some “retro” planet travel posters people have posted on the Internet. We went over design principles such as font choice, color choice, and use of images. Then we gave students the task of creating their own planet travel posters using Buncee, which would encourage people to “travel” to their planet while also sharing factual information.

The students were extremely motivated to use the images, animations, and backgrounds on the Buncee to create their posters. Buncee is very easy for students to use, so they were free to be creative instead of being bogged down with technical questions. The tools in Buncee allowed our kids to work on design principles, and show their understanding of making good design choices. The images, backgrounds, and animations are beautiful in Buncee, making the kids very proud of how their projects looked!

One of our technology standards is being able to solve problems while using technology. The Buncee program is a very safe place for kids to work on basic troubleshooting techniques as they play around and try clicking on different features to see what will happen. Buncee made it very easy for us to hit several standards with one project! A big reason why our students were so successful on their planet travel poster project was their motivation to use Buncee.