Who Are We? Where Are We Going?

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HWOC Assignment #1

What’s it really like to be eighteen in America now? That was the question posed by an article titled “Eighteen in the Bay,” published in Matter last June. The story featured the lives of a group of teens living in the San Francisco Bay area, and it provided a fascinating peek into being a teenager today. The young people who participated expressed themselves through everything from Vine videos and Tumblr posts to playlists and written essays. It was a fascinating and revealing project, but I couldn’t help noticing differences between their version of being a teen and the version I saw in my own classroom. I wondered what you (my students) would have created for a project like this one.

For our first assignment in HWOC, let’s answer the question, “What’s is really like to be fourteen in America now?” Begin by creating a Medium account. Next, create a post about your own life including:

1. A title and the story of your life in exactly 100 words. Use mainly nouns and verbs. Take poetic license if you wish, writing in fragments or verse form if this suits you. Include a single picture to illustrate your 100 words. The picture you choose does not have to be of you, and if you’d like you can use this picture as your title banner, as I have done in the top of this article.
2. Two pie charts showing 1) how you spend your time outside of school and 2) what you worry most about in life. You can either draw and color your charts by hand and take pictures of them to post, or you can use a free site like “Create a Graph” to help you make one. Take screen shots of your graph creations and add your charts to your post.
3. A link to a music video or the audio to a piece of music that means something special to you. It could be a song that inspires you, or one that reminds you of an important moment, or one that captures something you feel. Briefly explain why this music matters to you.
4. A picture of yourself at 9:00 p.m. on Monday or Tuesday night doing whatever it is you are doing. Write a sentence or two as a caption to explain what you are doing.
5. A 3–5 second video of yourself doing something you either do on a typical day or especially love to do or spend a great deal of time doing. If you know how to loop your video, do it.
6. Pictures of three people who inspire you. Use the photo captions to include photo credits. (Do this whenever you use other people’s photographs on Medium.) Write a brief explanation of what you admire about each person.
7. To end your post, pick one of the choices below. Or do both!

• Add an image of something that represents a dream of yours. The image can be literal (like a picture of a place you want to visit), or it could be symbolic (like a gold medal representing your desire to win a state medal in gymnastics). It can be a small dream (like hoping to get a tattoo), or a big dream (like wanting to one day become a state senator). Briefly explain your image.
• Add a quote that inspires you. If the quote is from a longer piece of writing, be sure to include a link in case your reader wants to see the whole thing.

Click the image below to see an example post featuring my own life. Feel free to use this post as a model.

Because this is the first time you will be using Medium, you may need to refer to this guide to help you create your post. You can use the Medium app on your iPad to write, add links, or add photos, but if you want to do some fancier editing, you’ll need to access your account using the browser on a laptop or home computer. Don’t hesitate to post questions in our Schoology update feed when you run into frustrations.

After you have completed your Medium post, turn in the link to the Schoology discussion I created for you. If you don’t want other people to see your Medium post, don’t use tags. If you’re especially shy and don’t want to take a chance that a stranger might accidentally see your post even though you did not tag it, publish your post as “unlisted” from your home computer. As long as you share your link, your classmates and teacher will still be able to see your creative work. Have fun!