I’m impressed by the Jasper learning project.
The videos present natural learning opportunities as the characters progress through challenges – for instance … how long will the fuel in your ultralight last, how far can you go, and so on.
In spite of the fact that the videos are clearly very dated, they’re entertaining, topical, rooted in “real” life, and effectively present learning as a natural requirement of everyday realities. This is an answer to the “why will I ever need to know this” attitude that often prevails in middle and high school students.
I can imagine using these with a class and then working through the problems with them. I wonder about interfacing this type of learning with more traditional textbooks and wordbooks, however. Perhaps this would serve best as an introduction to a topic/problem area, and the traditional textbooks would be more suited for practice and follow-up.
