Gender, Stereotypes and Society - Creative Digital Exploration

This Digital Storytelling Unit is designed to be completed over the course of three to four weeks. Students, working in teams of three to four, will explore core curricular content and be required to make an engaging and creative short video about that content. This Digital Storytelling unit is part of a larger initiative called Meridian Stories (www.meridianstories.com).

Each Digital Storytelling Unit:
• Should take three to four weeks to complete;
• Is aligned to Common Core Curricular Standards;
• Contains an Evaluation Rubric that allows the teacher to clearly score and appraise the students’ work;
• Is designed to be integrated into the classroom; and
• Can be assigned as an extra credit project to teams of students that you think would benefit from this kind of alternative, deep learning experience.

For this digital storytelling unit, students are asked to explore culture by investigating gender. Like an archeologist, students will be looking for gender “artifacts” that reveal the values, expectations, and mores of a culture—theirs!

This digital storytelling unit begins with student teams choosing a gender and then identifying gender stereotypes about boys or girls, men or women.

Then create a 2 to 3-minute video (documentary, mockumentary, exposé-style news piece…any format that they think will serve their content) that:
1. Exposes these gender stereotypes;
2. Shows examples of people resisting these stereotypes (OR imagines ways they might); and
3. Demonstrates how others have reacted (or might react) to these examples of non-conformance to gender stereotypes.

The video can include up to 1:00 of footage from other sources, while adhering to current digital licensing and copyright rules. The target audience is the students’ own peers.


Meridian Stories' Gender Exploration by Meridian Stories is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.