Fox Becomes a Better Person and School Train were assignments that required students to actively engage in learning. Any time a work has to be demonstrated, the effort and time taken to produce it is revealed. If very little time was needed and the project exceeded the outcome guidelines, then you are possibly dealing with a talented group.
I personally thought School Train got to be a little annoying after the first minute-and-a-half, but I'm sure the students had a blast producing it. The music, although hardly appealing to me, gave me an idea of what may appeal to younger generations. Reciting the Spanish words along with English helped me to learn what some words meant. The grading of this assignment would depend on the guidelines laid out. For example, if I required the following:
- Make the presentation appealing to an audience your age (music, color, etc.)
- Attempt to teach your audience a few words in another language
- Use music, color, and pictures of members of your group
then I would give this project a high grade.
Fox Becomes a Better Person was another fun and creative work that required effort and talent. I would give a high grade to this project as well, mostly because the student acted the whole story out. The background was fun to watch and the drawings were way better than anything I could come up with.
Epic 2015
As the story progressed, I almost forgot to "disengage" reality after 2008. I was caught up with the rate at which communication was growing, the mergers between giants, and how prevelant media was in everyday life. Oh, wait... that's happening now. Although these were only predictions of possible business ventures, I don't believe they're that far from reality.
In the classroom, electronic communication has become almost mandatory. As I'm writing this, I'm thinking about setting up a blog for my students to post homework assignments, contact info, lessons, cheat sheets, etc. Later today I'm going to enter grades into an online gradebook, which means I'll probably have to write and will receive e-mails to and from parents. Our school newsletter is online. A teacher down the hall just e-mailed me a request for our chemistry lab. Every classroom has a computer with online access for grades and projects. The home site for all of them: http://www.google.com/.
Sabrina's Journey
This is a simple and effective way to break the ice among students. Young people love to share about themselves-hence myspace and facebook's popularity. With my own students, I would do something very similar, but focus the topic on my curriculum. For example, in the beginning of the year I would have students gather images and narrate things they already know about math and things they would like to learn about. That would give me ideas for projects and developing units. At the end of the year, I would have another presentation about what they've learned, and then compare the two for an assessment.
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