Futuring

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

The first time that I watched School Train I was really confused. The second and third time I watched it I began to make connections to what the students were portraying. I think that they did a good job relating school to a metaphor. I liked many of the "messages" that they included. Such as you sit in your seat, but you go really far. Which is true on a train and in school.
The design of the video was really good. The kids got to act like.....KIDS. Which was really great. I felt that they understood the project very well, they made accurate comparisons which was what I think that assignment was about.

Fox Becomes a Better Person was less confusing! I think that Hannah did a great job with her digital story telling. There are a few things that I liked.
1. She was dressed in culturally accurate clothing, she was playing the part of a story teller.
2. She created the "back drops" by herself. She drew the pictures, and didn't download them off of Google.
3. The story that she told seemed to incorporate AK Native values, and could be applied to any child or adult.
I think that Hannah really got into her role as a story teller, told a good story and did most of the work herself. Those are the things that I would look for when grading this project.

B. What impacts could the developments portrayed in epic2015 have on your classroom, particularly with respect to things like pod casting?

Ok now that was weird. epic2015 is a prediction of what news will be like in the future. Epic stands for the evolving personalized information construct. Essentially there will be no mainstream news, which is a little confusing for me. Instead people will have instantaneous access to only the news they want. The information will not just be filtered from so called news sources but also from podcasts, blogs, personal webpages and much more.

I had to watch this twice to understand why the narrator informed us that people would be getting a shallow version of the news. And then the second time through it hit me. If I only want to here news about how panda bears are domesticated like kittens then that is all that I will get. I would never get to see the other side of the story. No longer will people have to filter their news and decide what sources they will want to rely on. They will just read what is given to them and then move on.

I am not too familiar with podcasting. I guess I thought that it just took information that was already out there and stuck it on a device such as an Ipod. I guess I am wrong. Now I see that podcasting is a way that random people can get their ideas heard. Anyone can make a podcast, create their own "show" and produce their own news. I have never seen a podcast used in a classroom. It is something that I am going to have to look into, I don't want my students to be smarter than me at technology now do I?

C. How might you use Sabrina's piece as a model for something you would to with your own students?

Sabrina's Journey was a great piece. She talked about her beginnings and her goals. She told us where she was coming from and where she was going.
This would be a great project to do with my students. I think that all students should look at where they have been and where they are going. Of course a high school jock will tell me he wants to play professional football; but at least I got them thinking.
I would ask my students to: tell me where they have been , where they are now, and where they want to go. With that I want to know how they plan on getting to their future. I think the idea of a video will let them use the technology talents that EVERY high school student has to make something uniquely them.