School Train

The first question is: am I grading the teacher, or the students? Either way, I think it will be unfair, as I don't believe in grading without making your expectations clear beforehand. To grade the students, I would have created a rubric before beginning the assignment and discussed it with them. It would include the following:

Use of Technology:

* Was the technology used in a way that promotes the understanding of the concept?
* Was the presentation visually interesting?

Effort:

* Did the student put in time and effort into the project?
* Did they perform to the best of their ability?

Understanding of Concept

* Did the student's work on the video show that they understood the concept?
* Can the student explain the concept to others?

Assessing the Teacher

I think a teacher would benefit from feedback that promotes self-reflection on the project more than they would benefit from a rubric. So here is a list of things I thought worked well, and things that the teacher may want to ponder:

Apparent Successes:

* Students seemed to be enjoying themselves
* It is likely that the students will remember the material much better
* Learning to work on a project from start to finish is a real-world skill

Questions for the teacher to think about:

* How much time did this project take? Was the learning experience valuable enough to justify the amount of material that will be left out of the curriculum to make time for this project?
* Were all the students able to participate? Or were most sitting around while a few worked diligently?
* Did the students really understand the concept of metaphor? Or were the majority of them just excited about making funny faces at the camera?

Fox Becomes a Better Person

Again, I would have created a rubric and discussed this with the students before beginning the assignment. The rubric would have looked something like this:

Quality of Story:

* Was the story interesting and engaging?
* Was the story imbued with traditional values?

Quality of Illustrations

* Did the illustrations help us understand the story?
* Were the illustrations visually appealing?

Presentation

* Was the story told in a way that kept us interested?
* Were hand gestures and body movement used?

Effort

* Did the student put in time and effort into the project?
* Did they perform to the best of their ability?

For each category, each student would be assessed as to whether they were emerging, developing, proficient, or advanced by a set of criteria. Hannah would be advanced for the first three categories, and probably for the fourth as well, though I don't know what her ability level is.

EPIC 2015: "The Democratization of Information" or "Short Attention Span Theatre"

I believe that the developments portrayed in EPIC 2015 would only further some of the trends that are happening in the classroom now. As information becomes democratized, assessing whether information is reliable will become an even more valuable skill. As podcasts and other easily accessible, relevant, and entertaining electronic materials become more widespread, students will become even more addicted to constant entertainment. As the importance of such electronic materials increases, the gap between students who have reliable internet and technology resources at home and those who don't (a large percentage of my students) will grow even larger.

The Dilemma of Reliable Information

Wikipedia is an excellent example of one of the highly contentious sources of information in schools right now. It is widely used by students, and almost universally hated by teachers. The most common approach I have seen teachers use is to simply ban Wikipedia, which I believe is completely ineffective. Much of what is available on Wikipedia is accurate information, and students need to be taught how to discern between good and bad sources. I teach students to use Wikipedia as a starting point, and follow the references and links until they reach primary sources of information. As we approach an EPIC 2015 type of world, it will become more important for students to learn these skills.

Entertainment Junkies

More and more students are able to get exactly what they want, when they want it through electronic media, sometimes resulting in a lack of interest in other things. I believe teachers need to harness this excitement about these types of media (YouTube, podcasts, Wikipedia, etc.) by creating projects that use them. This will also make them less taboo in the classroom, which often decreases the amount of interest in them.

SabrinaJourney

Actually, I was recently considering using digital storytelling in a way similar to Sabrina in my classroom. As an assistant teacher for CITC, occasionally I am asked to substitute teach, and so for the first two weeks of this school year I taught English 9 and 10. We were working on a community poster project, in which students wrote about the people that were important to them in the various communities that they are a part of (school, village, family, friends, sports teams, etc.) and created a poster to display this. My girlfriend's mother was taking a digital storytelling class at the same time, and recommended it for my class. Unfortunately, we were already a little too far into the project to switch gears at that point. I think that it may be a good idea for next year; however, I'm a bit worried about the technology gap amongst our students. Many of my students did not have pictures available for their posters, either digital or hard copies, and many could not type up their writing at home. In a poster project, students could easily get around these obstacles, but I think in a computer based project such as Sabrina's many students would be at a pretty strong disadvantage.