Tech Trends

Originally posted March 22, 2014.

In this week’s assignment, we expanded on our understanding of the technology trends highlighted in the current Horizon Report. In the Higher Education Edition, two trends that seem to span across all the rest are collaboration among students and students as creators.

This was a challenging assignment for me, as I attempted to balance the needs of my actual institution with the trends that are occurring at colleges and universities across the country. It also posed a challenge for me because, although I frequently teach “one-shot” sessions, I am rarely given the opportunity to plan and carry out a full-fledged assignment, or to assess student learning that may be impacted by my instruction.

For this assignment, I elected to explore the topic of digital storytelling. I chose this topic for several reasons: a) it is clearly relevant to the theme of students as creators, b) a digital storytelling assignment could be carried out in a collaborative way, and c) it addresses the need to develop and assess students’ digital literacy skills. After analyzing the topic, I created a lesson plan that could be implemented in a first-year-experience course, but is really translatable to any course. It can also be implemented in a traditional face-to-face classroom, or in an online course. Finally, I created a grading rubric using Rubistar’s customizable rubrics.

Please view my analysis of digital storytelling as a collaborative and creative project HERE.
You can also view my LESSON PLAN and GRADING RUBRIC on my PBWiki site.