Sunday, September 7, 2008

Futuring Assignment

How would you grade or assess Fox Becomes a Better Person and School Train?

These presentations show the students' ability to meet the requirements of the assignments and to demonstrate that they understand the material.  In School Train, the students clearly demonstrated that they understand what a metaphore is.  The remarkable part of the exercise is that the students were able to complete many steps and put them together to tell a story, the story of how school is like a train.  I would grade this project with an enthusiastic A or Exemplary.  
Hannah's presentation of Fox becomes a better person was also excellent. She knew the story without any notes and used sound-effects and lots of gestures to illustrate the action in the story.  It seemed like she had presented the story without the background drawings and they were edited in for the final recording.  Her presentation was strong alone but the drawings add more for the audience.  She would definitely pass the assignment.

What impacts could the developments portrayed in epic2015 have on your classroom, particularly with respect to things like podcasting?
The developments in technology in the classroom represent a departure from the five paragraph essay with pen and paper.  They also represent multistep activities towards a complex final product: school train. The simpler presentation by Hannah seems much more approachable for students working independently rather than in groups.  
EDIT:  I would definitely like to use Podcasts in two different ways. 
1) I would like to have students produce a podcast to preset their perspective in a civics class.  This could give them the opportunity to completely express themselves on a topic without being interrupted it also gives them a chance to formulate thier thoughts and opinions on the subject.
2)  I would liketo produce my own Podcasts during lab in science class.  This could be helpful to students who miss school that day and for students to review while writing their final write-up of the lab report.

How might you use Sabrina's piece as a model for something you would do with your own students?  
In Sabrina's piece, she uses a voiceover on a slide show.  I could see this type of presentation as a great model for a biology lesson that could pop with photographs and the lecture would benefit from some differentiated instruction.  EDIT: I could use the example from Sabrina "Do I Belong Here"  except during a lesson on invasive species.  I would put up images of different organisms in their environment and ask "Do I Belong Here?"