I’ll be the first to admit that I wasn’t a big fan of visual journals before. I thought they involved too much “craft.” However, the more I read and the more examples I saw, the more I became interested. I am considering making visual journals as a new art unit of study for my grade 7s. The reason being, it may be a good way to introduce various ways of drawing and various other ways of utilising various mediums and presentation (that’s a lot of various). These activities may further assist the other units the students do on drawing and collage as well. I am considering the summative assessment to be a visual journal for their one week field studies trip that they will do in October. Anyway, as I read, I took some notes on journaling and compiled them into this attractive document to share here. I know you will be dying to read this during your summer vacation by the pool. If you have any suggestions for me, I’d love to hear from you. I’ll also let you know if I decide to go ahead with this idea.

July 29th Update: I’ve decided to give the unit a go. 

As an experiment, I decided to try making a travel journal for my holiday in Thailand, as I may consider making this a new grade 7 art unit for my students. With it, there could be a lot of potential for mixing different mediums and styles and would result in a summative assessment visual journal for their one week field studies excursion. You can view the other pictures via Flickr here. Sorry, I am having a lot of difficulty with Edublogs and Paypal and am currently unable to embed.

(cross posted here)