the challenges of new media!

You may have noticed that I've done the unthinkable on a blog: I've made commenting an option only for those who are members and I've deleted previous comments from those outside the group. I don't mean any disrespect to those who took time to comment. Though I appreciated the feedback, I think we need to reserve comments for those of us working in this specific context, and, as we noticed from last meeting, we have diverse opinions on what we should do with students on this final assignment.

I will, though, note that all eight outside comments argued with Kathy for a new new media project rather than *just* a multimodal project (like a poster) or a PPT. PPT seems to stir up incredible rancor. I'd argue that people should be more frustrated with the way it's used rather than the way it is. Prezi is slick now, but it'll wear soon enough, when everyone at every conference is swooping around on the screen.

Even after the helpful comments, we're still stuck with an administrative question: How do you prepare 50 graduate instructors, some with little experience with new new media, to teach some 3,000 students to do a digital project that must have the following characteristics:

• clear universal achievable outcomes tied to English 150 and university aims
• clear, teachable principles that can be used to evaluate what's good and what isn't
  
• a product that can be evaluated (i.e., graded) using fair standards and the same rubric for every student