Written by Kari Milton in 2015. Ms. Milton, a Los Angelos Teacher of the Year winner, has been engaging her students with Teens Dream for the past few years.
Students need authenticity. It is not enough for their teachers to tell them to turn a project in for a grade. They need an audience and a reason. Finding local, regional, state, national, and even global competitions allow an audience for your students to present to. What’s more is there are some pretty cool awards too!
This year I had students create a video for the Teen Dream Competition. Students were required to create a video that could be entered into this competition. (Though they were not required to enter). Students wrote a message, storyboarded ideas, directed, and acted in their video and edited and produced their finished videos. After turning the video in to me, and viewing their classmate’s videos they still had a month before the competition deadline to edit and redefine their videos before the official competition deadline. 72 students created videos – Here’s a compilation video of snippets of most of their videos. Next year I am going to make it about sharing the message more than actually the competition. Many of their dreams need to be shared as the messages are so important.
Encourage your students to enter the 2018 video competition!
Kari Milton, NBCT
Classroom teacher with 15 years of experience and a Master’s degree in Educational Technology from Northern Arizona University. My professional passion is creating more technological engaging environments in education. I attend conferences to keep up with technology and have given ed Tech presentations in Arizona and South Africa. When I am not improving my skills in ed tech, I also like to travel, dance, and ride vintage cycles. I also enjoy pets and have adopted 2 wonderful dogs. Follow me on twitter @Miltology