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High School Grade  Project 9 weeks

Create Your Own Media Quest

Michael L
Updated
MA:Pr4.1.ii
MA:Pr4.1.iii
MA:Cr2.1.iii
MA:Pr5.1.i.a
MA:Pr5.1.iii.a
+ 11 more
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Purpose

Students design and produce a self-directed multimedia story that reflects a topic, question, or experience that matters to them while making intentional choices about audience, platform, style, and message. Through mini-lessons, studio work, critique, and weekly reflection, they build technical media skills alongside planning, collaboration, communication, and revision habits needed to complete a polished final product. The work culminates in a public share through online publication and school announcements, giving students an authentic reason to create media with clarity, thematic integrity, and purpose.

Learning goals

Students will develop and produce an original media project that communicates a clear story, purpose, or message through a format of their choice, such as video, podcast, digital art, photo essay, or mixed-media production. They will apply artistic, technical, and design skills in their selected medium, plan and manage a multiweek workflow, and use available tools and resources strategically while adapting to constraints of time, audience, and production needs. Students will strengthen critique, revision, collaboration, and self-direction through weekly check-ins, reflection, peer feedback, and role-based teamwork when working with others. They will also learn to present work for a public audience by preparing their final piece for online publication and school-wide sharing in ways that maintain thematic integrity and stylistic continuity.

Standards
  • [National Core Arts Standards] MA:Pr4.1.ii - HS Accomplished: Integrate various arts, media arts forms, and academic content into unified media arts productions that retain thematic integrity and stylistic continuity, such as transmedia productions.
  • [National Core Arts Standards] MA:Pr4.1.iii - HS Advanced: Synthesize various arts, media arts forms and academic content into unified media arts productions that retain artistic fidelity across platforms, such as transdisciplinary productions.
  • [National Core Arts Standards] MA:Cr2.1.iii - HS Advanced: Integrate a sophisticated personal aesthetic and knowledge of systems processes in forming, testing, and proposing original artistic ideas, prototypes, and production frameworks, considering complex constraints of goals, time, resources, and personal limitations.
  • [National Core Arts Standards] MA:Pr5.1.i.a - HS Proficient: Demonstrate progression in artistic, design, technical, and soft skills, as a result of selecting and fulfilling specified roles in the production of a variety of media artworks.
  • [National Core Arts Standards] MA:Pr5.1.iii.a - HS Advanced: Employ mastered artistic, design, technical, and soft skills in managing and producing media artworks. b. c.
  • [National Core Arts Standards] MA:Pr4.1.i - HS Proficient: Integrate various arts, media arts forms, and content into unified media arts productions, considering the reaction and interaction of the audience, such as experiential design.
  • [National Core Arts Standards] MA:Pr5.1.ii.c - HS Accomplished: Demonstrate the skillful adaptation and combination of tools, styles, techniques, and interactivity to achieve specific expressive goals in the production of a variety of media artworks.
  • [National Core Arts Standards] MA:Cr1.1.iii - HS Advanced: Integrate aesthetic principles with a variety of generative methods to fluently form original ideas, solutions, and innovations in media arts creation processes.
  • [National Core Arts Standards] MA:Pr5.1.iii.c - HS Advanced: Independently utilize and adapt tools, styles, and systems in standard, innovative, and experimental ways in the production of complex media artworks.
  • [National Core Arts Standards] MA:Cr3.1.iii.a - HS Advanced: Synthesize content, processes, and components to express compelling purpose, story, emotion, or ideas in complex media arts productions, demonstrating mastery of associated principles, such as hybridization.
Competencies
  • Content Expertise - Students develop key competencies, skills, and dispositions with ample opportunities to apply knowledge and engage in work that matters to them.
  • Collaboration - Students co-design projects with peers, exercise shared-decision making, strengthen relational agency, resolve conflict, and assume leadership roles.
  • Critical Thinking & Problem Solving - Students consider a variety of innovative approaches to address and understand complex questions that are authentic and important to their communities.
  • Effective Communication - Students practice listening to understand, communicating with empathy, and share their learning through exhibiting, presenting and reflecting on their work.
  • Self Directed Learning - Students use teacher and peer feedback and self-reflection to monitor and direct their own learning while building self knowledge both in and out of the classroom.
  • Academic Mindset - Students establish a sense of place, identity, and belonging to increase self-efficacy while engaging in critical reflection and action.

Products

Students will create a student-led project proposal, production plan, and weekly planner/check-in tracker that maps milestones, needed resources, chosen roles, and revision goals. Throughout the project, they will also produce research notes, concept sketches or storyboards, sample tests/prototypes, reflection entries, and draft versions that are reviewed during critique check-ins and assessed with the rubric. Final products may include a podcast episode, short film, photo essay, animation, digital zine, social media campaign, multimedia installation, or other approved media artwork that tells a story through a deliberately chosen medium. Each project concludes with an artist statement or creator reflection and a polished version published online and/or featured through the school morning announcements.

Launch

Open with a “media story lab” in which students rotate through short, hands-on stations in the LRC to try podcasting, video, photography, graphic design, and audio recording while examining strong student-friendly examples from current and historical media. Follow this with a quick gallery walk and discussion around the prompt, “What story do you want to tell and through what medium?” so students begin identifying audience, purpose, and possible formats. Students then use the planner to brainstorm three project ideas, choose whether they want to work solo or in a group, and draft an initial concept for a piece that could eventually be shared online and through morning announcements. End with a brief teacher mini-lesson on how media choices shape meaning, plus a first reflection check-in on interests, strengths, and next steps.

Exhibition

Host a final multimedia showcase where students present their finished pieces, creative process, and key revisions to peers, staff, families, and invited community members, including LRC staff. Publish each project online in a class gallery or school media page with artist statements, process highlights, and reflection excerpts, and feature selected work through the school morning announcements over several days. Structure the event as a festival-style exhibition with listening/viewing stations for podcasts, films, digital stories, interactive media, and other formats so students can share through the medium they chose. Include a brief audience feedback component, such as comment cards or QR-code responses, so students gather authentic reactions to how effectively their story and medium connected with viewers.