The Jasper series videos are examples of anchored instruction where students are invited to join a narrative story which relates to real-life and leaves them to solve an open-ended complex problem where all the necessary and relevant information is presented.

Through the eyes of an educator I had a few questions:

-Throughout the videos it appeared that there are smaller questions posed to the students? What opportunity do the students have to generate their own sub-goals? Or is this done so that the task seems achievable?

-I was wondering why definitions are provided when that seems like a great opportunity for students to do some inquiry? Is this because of the era (late 1980’s) of the videos and the lack of technological resources? i.e. Google.

A few positive thoughts to note about the Jasper series 2 videos as a TELE designer:

-The videos were more engaging and relatable to students unlike the Jasper series 1 videos ( adults flying and fishing in the woods)

-The notion of a community of learners made the viewer feel included and that their contribution was important

-Some of the videos had students as the speakers which was another relatable feature

-Difficult concepts such as scale proportions were displayed well and made the concept easy to understand

-Digital software uses made it easy to understand spatial representations.