In this hands-on course you will
- Learn photographic and design techniques to effectively communicate a message, story or emotion
- Make your own photo essay for instructional use
- Develop a standards-aligned (CCSS, NGSS) lesson plan in which students create a photo essay to demonstrate learning
Who Should Take This Course
K-12 educators in all subject areas who want to develop skills and confidence with media making and media literacy.
Course Features
Learn online at your own pace with step-by-step videos and hands-on activities. Join live events with instructors and peers. It’s completely free!
Certificate of Completion
Earn a Certificate of Completion for 10 hours of professional development. Then apply for graduate units from one of our university partners.
Learning Objectives
Master the basics of communicating with graphics and images needed to enhance instruction and support student learning, including:
- Explore how visual design fundamentals, like color choice, layout, and framing work together to tell a story
- Create lesson plans for classroom projects that align with Common Core and other curriculum standards to ensure that time spent using visuals to produce graphics or interactives result in student learning you want to see
- Develop strategies for allocating and organizing resources to best facilitate visual media projects in a classroom environment
Course Curriculum
Enroll now for free!
You will have four weeks to complete the assignments in this course and receive a Certificate of Completion. If you would like to continue to access the course content after those 4 weeks, you are welcome to re-enroll. There is no penalty for taking the course multiple times.
Your Instructors
We support educators in integrating video storytelling, audio podcasts and other media literacy skills into their teaching practice.
Charlotte Cheng
Charlotte Cheng is the STEM Education Program Manager at KQED. Her expertise is creating effective and engaging content for kids at the intersection of education, media, and technology. Charlotte has also taught in a variety of K-12 classroom settings and one of her workshops was featured on ABC News.
Rachel Roberson
Rachel is KQED’s program manager for humanities professional learning. Previously, she was an English and social studies classroom teacher and teacher leader in San Francisco, Oakland, Austin and internationally. Before becoming a teacher, she was a newspaper reporter in the Bay Area.
Rik Panganiban
Rik Panganiban is the Manager of Online Learning at KQED. He supports educators’ professional growth through KQED Teach, an online learning platform with more than 10K registered users. Previously, Rik served as the Senior Manager of Digital Learning at the California Academy of Sciences.
Recommended Learning Path
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About KQED
KQED is a nonprofit, public media station and NPR and PBS member station based in San Francisco that offers award-winning education resources and services free to educators nationwide. KQED Teach is a collection of professional development courses that empower educators to teach media literacy, make media for the classroom and lead media-making projects with students in K-12.
All course content unless otherwise noted is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This license excludes all user generated content unless explicitly labeled for reuse by the user. Permission to reuse user generated content should be directed to the individual creator.
Have a question? Email us at [email protected] or check out our FAQ. Find out about our district supports here.