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Digital Citizen Cards

This project idea came from a monthly challenge put out by Adobe Express. We have the free EDU version deployed in our district and I thought this might be fun to try with a class. I liked that there was a prize element where the students could win a classroom set of hero cards and it tied in with Digital Citizenship Week (October 17-21). 

I teamed up with an elementary technology lab teacher and we decided to try it with one fifth grade class. 

We looked over the available templates and decided we liked the layout of the 6-8 template the best (because they had to list advice for staying safe online). 

One of the best things about these Adobe monthly challenge templates is that they can be modified. The revised template can then be sent to students via a link or through Google Classroom. 

All the templates for this challenge

Adobe gives you a sample template with sample wording but we wanted students to come up with their own wording. Neither one of us was keen on the section of green faces but we liked the K-2 template where students listed what they did besides be online. I do have to say that I found several online examples of what people did with the faces that were clever (I searched Twitter #AdobeEduCreative to look over some samples other educators were posting).  

Adobe's Original Template

Our revised template

Our time with students in the computer lab was limited to one class period. Knowing it would take longer, I reached out to the homeroom teacher to see if I could come in the day before to explain the project and have them fill out a graphic organizer. 



We were lucky 5th grade had Related Arts the first period of the day (8:30 a.m.). The next day the homeroom teacher was happy to bring students to us early (8 a.m.) to get started. 

Ms. Himes, the technology lab teacher made her card to show students (see mine at the top). It was so good! She used the free'ish site Pixton to make a cartoon of herself (she is not a fan of having her picture taken) and used an online color palette picker for her color scheme. We would have loved to have given students the option of cartooning themselves but time was not on our side...but we did mentally file it away as a future possibility.


The first thing we had students do is open the template and share it with us so we could review and edit if necessary. Since we had deployed Adobe as a school district all our names and contacts are under the "share" and "invite" option. 

We asked them to type their words first, then insert their graphics, then take and insert their picture (students have 1:1 laptops with a built in camera feature with timer), and finally change font and coloring if they wanted. 

We had about five out of the 18 students complete it during the time we had them. Many were "nearly" done. The computer lab teacher and I, throughout the day, tweaked the finished ones (mostly for spelling and spacing) and helped to finish the nearly done ones. There were about eight that we needed to still work with. Luckily the school has WIT time at the end of the day and we were able to grab all but three during this time to finish. 

All in all the project took much more time then we thought. It was unlikely a regular classroom teacher would have devoted all the necessary time to it, in and amongst all the other things they have to do during the day. It is definitely something a technology or computer lab teacher could tackle over a few sessions. FULL DISCLOSURE: I had to return to the school two more days to catch the entire class since we had students absent. Normally I would have called the project finished but we were submitting the cards to be published by Adobe and wanted all the students represented. 

We were very happy they turned out so cute and the kids are excited about the possibility of getting them printed by Adobe. 

Check out this Facebook post of the student's hard work. If you wind up trying it with a class I would love to hear about your experience. Please comment below or tag me on Twitter @atechcoachlife. 


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