How to Create a Digital Vision Board-Directions for Students
Creating a digital vision board for students is a great way to kick off the new year. It provides a creative outlet to express goals and dreams for students’ lives and also motivates kids to reach them.
Intro
The beginning of the academic school year is a perfect time to brainstorm the visions and goals we’d like to work towards achieving in the next year, phase of life, and beyond. Creating a digital vision board for kids is simpler than you might think, and kids are often already very familiar with using technology! Goal setting by creating a digital vision board for students is the perfect activity for the first week or day of school. It’s also a great activity to complete in January after Winter Break.
The vision board will remind kids of their ultimate goals every time they see it each day. It will inspire them to keep going when they need a little push towards discipline or resilience. A digital vision board can benefit kids by motivating them to work towards their goals and dreams-both in and out of school. This can apply to the student’s academic world, extracurricular activities, or any other aspect of life. Read on for more info and simple digital vision board directions for students.
What is a Digital Vision Board?
A vision board is a way to put your wishes, dreams, goals, and desires for your life all in one place. Some vision boards include a word or quote. Most, however, are composed of pictures intended to symbolize what you’d like to accomplish and experience in your life. If you’re thinking of creating a vision board yourself, I’ve provided info, directions, and examples in my Create a Vision Board article.
A digital vision board for students makes goal setting more fun. It’s a way of finding a creative outlet to express your goals and dream life. Then, by placing it in a location you’ll see often, it serves as inspiration and a reminder of what you are working towards achieving.
A traditional vision board is created by cutting and pasting pictures onto paper or poster board. To create a traditional vision board, you will need supplies such as scissors, glue bottles or glue sticks, poster board paper, and lots of magazines.
Creating a vision board in this way can get messy, and you have a limited number of pictures in specific magazines at the time. Instead, creating a digital vision board for students allows for more creativity. You can fine-tune and search for the exact type of image you’re looking for through the internet. Students will also have the opportunity to continuously edit and tweak the formatting of their vision board until it looks right for them.
It isn’t as easy to edit or fix mistakes when creating a traditional physical vision board. This is why I suggest digital vision boards for kids. If you’d like a hard copy, you can print the vision board using your printer. This way, you can always come back and edit a picture or two a few months down the road.
Why Kids Should Create Digital Vision Boards
Kids should create vision boards to help them brainstorm about their goals and dreams. This is such an empowering practice for a time when children might feel like they don’t have that much control over day-to-day choices simply because of their age and stage.
Maybe a student realizes they’d like to be a veterinarian one day, and creating a vision board motivates them to excel in biology class this year. Perhaps someone else celebrates that baseball is their top priority, and this inspires them to put in an extra hour committed to their sport every day. Maybe another student realizes they have a dream college they’d like to attend, and creating a vision board motivates them to earn a higher GPA this year.
In this way, digital vision boards for kids help with motivation and focus. The vision board lays out the image of their dreams and what they are working towards, allowing them to remember their “why” in the mundane of every day.
Creating a vision board is also an avenue of creative artistic and personal expression. The student can choose the colors, look, feel, and theme of the life they’d like to live. For young kids, it might open parents’ eyes to passions you didn’t realize your child had. Maybe through this exercise, you hear your child or student say how important trips to the zoo over the next year are to them, or perhaps they’d really like to learn to cook more. This exercise in creating a digital vision board provides open communication between child and parent or student and teacher.
Finally, creating a vision board is just plain fun! It’s a positive, inspirational way to start a new school year and plan for the future. It starts everything off on a positive note. Even better, sharing your vision board with classmates in a small-group or large-group setting helps new people get to know each other. In this way, it could become a good icebreaker activity, too!
Tools & Platforms for Creating Digital Vision Boards
Where to Find the Pictures
My favorite resources to find commercial free pictures are Unsplash and Pexels. You can search for a picture on these sites just like you would using Google Images.
Pinterest is another place to brainstorm vision board images, themes, styles, and colors for your vision board. It’s easy to search for sample vision boards or inspirational and dreamy vacation pictures of places like Fiji or Paris.
Google Images is another resource to use when brainstorming various pictures or types of photos. Of course, it’s recommended to use images you are legally allowed to use to create a vision board, especially if it will be shared online.
Where to Build the Board
My favorite way to build a vision board is by using Canva. It is free, although some extra features require an optional monthly subscription. Canva has lots of vision board templates ready for your students to use. The templates inspire creativity and provide ideas for color palettes and design layouts. It creates a little more guidance towards a beautiful visual layout.
If you’d rather not use Canva for any reason, simply using Google Slides is another option. Most students in fourth grade and up are more than likely already familiar with how to use Google Slides. Providing both options to students and letting them decide which platform works best for them allows for more creativity.
Step by Step Directions for Creating a Digital Vision Board for Students
Creating a vision board is a creative and fun activity that allows students to dream, plan, and artistically express themselves at the beginning of the year. Find steps and guidelines for students to create their vision board below.
In addition, I have created easy-to-follow PDF directions with screenshot images for each step. It highlights the steps to follow using Canva specifically. I’ve also included a general printout for older students with a brief explanation of a vision board and directions on making one.
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Step 1: Set Goals & Intentions
This is the time for kids to brainstorm what their dream life looks like! They can plan for the next few months, the academic school year, or the rest of their lives. The choice is really for you as the teacher and the kids themselves to make. I like putting a mix of achievable short-term goals and long-term goals on my vision board. I also like to include all aspects of life on my vision board.
While GPA and grades are important and should definitely be considered when creating a vision board during school time, the “greater why” might be just as important for motivation. For example, getting into college or achieving a dream career will allow students to think about the small daily actions they can take to achieve these goals.
Optional categories for goal setting include health and sports, adventure, quality time with family and friends, personal development (such as improving time management, resilience, confidence, or leadership skills), happiness and self-care intentions, hobbies, and dream vacations you want to take or things you want to experience or do.
Here are some brainstorming questions. What would your dream life look like? What would you have accomplished in your academic or future career world? Where would you live? What vacations would you take? What would you do in your free time-play sports, go to the beach or museums?
Of course, the goals will look different depending on the student’s age. A young student might want to learn to read or visit the zoo or beach this year. A high schooler might focus on their dream university or a specific goal for the after-school sport they play.
Step 2: Gather Inspiration and Materials
Once the students’ personal and school goals have been established and written down, the next step is to find pictures, quotes, and words to represent the overall arching theme for their vision board. Just as some adults create a word of the year, students can also choose a word for the year. Examples include play, focus, adventure, brave, and peace.
Pinterest is a wonderful resource to research and gather inspiration. You can search for words of the year, find specific types of inspirational quotes, and find an endless supply of images. If students have their own Pinterest account, they can also save their favorite pins to a Pinterest board dedicated to creating their vision board.
Other places to search for images include Pexels, Unsplash, and Pixabay.
Step 3: Create the Vision Board
You can create the vision board using any platform you’d like. Some options include Canva and Google Slides. For a step-by-step guide on how to use Canva to create your vision board, download my PDF directions below.
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Then, you place your vision board where you’ll see it often. This could be printed out and pasted onto a notebook or binder cover. Or it can be turned into a computer’s wallpaper so you see it every time you open your laptop. The options are endless and fluid-there is no one way to create and use a vision board.
Step 4: Review and Revise
After a few months, it may be time to review and revise the vision board. It’s completely normal for some things to change. Maybe you’ve reached a specific goal or are no longer interested in a different one.
For students, the end of a quarter or semester is the perfect opportunity to revise vision boards. For older students, this is something they can work on quietly while others finish their tests. It also provides an activity for students to complete while the teacher works with others or grades final exams.
Accountability is key as well. In a classroom setting, it’s a great idea to allow students who want to share to go over their successes, accomplishments, and what they’re looking forward to accomplishing or experiencing in the future.
Tips for Making the Most Out of a Digital Vision Board
In my opinion, the most important part of a vision board is seeing it daily. It becomes a visual reminder of your goals, dreams, and aspirations. Seeing the vision board every day will push the creator to be more disciplined when the daily grind gets monotonous or tough.
It can be fun to share your vision board with classmates or family, and this option can also be a way to have more accountability towards reaching your dreams.
Finally, it’s important to revise your vision board during regular intervals of your choice. Revising the vision board could be a fun annual activity, or it could be revised every six or three months. Students in a traditional school year could revise it every quarter or semester. This is the advantage of creating a vision board digitally. It is so easy to make little changes time and time again!
Conclusion
So there you have it! Creating a digital vision board for kids can be a fun activity at the beginning of the year. It can inspire students to map out their goals and dreams and decide what they want their life to look like. It provides encouragement and inspiration from within to live one’s best life.
Creating a board digitally makes it easier for the teacher-you don’t have to supply any glue, paper, or magazines! It also allows the student access to more pictures, preset color combinations, and layout styles.
Have you created a digital vision board? What did it help you move towards in your life? Let me know in the comments below! Happy goal setting!
