Creating avatars and icons instead of photographs

By Susan Ettenheim |  High School art/media/library/technology teacher

 

We've found that the whole problem of students posting personal photographic representations is gone when we teach them about making avatars or icons as personal representations. Here is the lesson we use for Youth Voices for building Avators / Icons. You will see that this lesson is in the context of our site, Youth Voices, but it certainly can be used in any context.

 

Building Avatars/Icons

Introduce yourself by putting an avatar/icon in your user posts. Have your avatar/icon appear next to your posts in Youth Voices. You can then make different avatars/icons for different kinds of posts. An avatar is a representation of the essence of you.

Essential Questions

• What is special to you and about you?
• What is important to you?
• How can these things come together as a visual representation of you?
• How will creating and using a visual representation of yourself help a young person at another school relate to your life and get to know you?

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