Final Presentation!

I thought the Green Team's final presentation went very well. I was surprised at how long we actually took--we definitely had more to talk about than I thought we would! I thought everyone in the class did a really excellent job.

Team Blue had a very developed philosophy about diversity through lens technology and the performing arts. Their idea to create web pages that focus on different cultures was really excellent--I think students would love to have a resource like that. I was really impressed with the multimedia in their presentation. It seems like they spent a lot of time making sure that they had materials that would enrich the ideas they discussed. It made the presentation so engaging! The video of the NYC teacher who visited Japan and brought back ideas for her classroom was expecially inspiring to me. Although teaching diversity is somewhat controversial, I thought Team Blue's presentation and especially that particular video were great arguments for it. Those students seemed to be truly invested in their learning. They took an assignment and made it a living entity. The arts are so important for education because they require that kind of investment. If technology, art, and education become intertwined, it seems that the products will be better and more fully realized.

I thought Team Red's presentation was extremely well thought out. Even though the websites they created for the project were just prototypes, they were very polished and could definitely become great teaching tools right away. Their work could be very important as internet research becomes more and more common in schools, especially in younger grades. A site like theirs would provide safe, factual resources for students and would provide peace of mind of parents. Something like this would also being to instill the importance of legitimate sources early on. As more and more information becomes available on the internet, it's easy for the quality of that information to decrease dramatically. A community of websites like the one Team Red came up with could be come very useful and important for students and teachers alike. In fact, it would be a wonderful idea to connect a group of sites like this to an education based social networking site. The transition from research to discussion could be seamless!