It's Good Stuff

Epic 2015

This piece impressively pulls off the scary-cool effect they certainly were shooting for. Coming from someone who knows very little about Google and digital forms of everything, I was impressed at how much has been accomplished, and scared that the world seems to be passing me by. There were three parts of the piece I especially liked.

• The history beginning in the late nineties until now gave new information to connect to connect the viewer to the possible future.
• The animation was simple, but creative and helpful to understanding the flow of the piece.
• A look into technology and the effects that it has had and will have on the world makes for interesting and attention keeping material.

My only criticism would be on the introduction. I was initially turned off by the introduction because the piece began from the perspective of the future. This angle forced me into forming early feelings that the whole piece would be fictional and irrelevant.

I am skeptical on the effects that something like this could have on the classroom. As my uncle concurred, the line about news becoming a ‘collection of trivia, much of it untrue’ worries me. How can you teach about the world if you do not know who to trust?

Technology such as podcasting can most certainly be used in the classroom as a tool to attract interest, make connections, and motivate students. It can be good to use new, interesting technology to enhance your class, but it can easily be overdone.

On the first day of school this year, we used Google Earth to show exactly where each person grew up, and is from. I am impressed with the program, and it is fun to play around with. However, in a class of 30 students, this activity was very repetitious and took time. I felt that the learning curve, and interest in the class decreasing after a short while. The technology was being overused, and the benefits of it were lost.

Fox becomes a better person and School Train

Hannah Davis does an excellent job in this short film. She has her story memorized and performs it with actions that assist in the story telling. Her artwork in the background show good use of technology and add to the tale. I also enjoyed the opening use of Tlingit language to show how this is traditionally how stories were told and retold. This truly is a project that incorporates cultural values and learning with traditional western schooling. In this piece, both educational spheres come together as one.

I do not know if this is a story Hannah made up herself, but in a second reading of the Tlingit values that scroll the page prior to her performance, I noticed how many of those values were taught through her story. This is not just an impressive performance of memorization, and creativity, but values are passed along as well. Lastly, as noted in the title, the fox is not just a fox, but a person. It is obvious that she is telling a story to other people. Morals are being taught. This video would receive and “A” in my class because of the content included the performance of Hannah, and the neat effects shown throughout.

You can tell that lots of work went into school train. It is fast moving, and incorporates different scenes, graphics, languages and students. However, it seems like a huge project in order to teach about metaphor. I would fault the teacher more than the students, because I’m sure they had plenty of help on this project and creatively did as they were told. As my uncle also pointed out, the video has a negative view of school in some places. Lots of time in your seat…Testing pull hard. Perhaps the true metaphor is comparing school to things you do not like.

# posted by Timm : 12:35 PM