A huge thank you to Josh Thomas for emailing me to tell me about
IFC’s free film class. Well, I’m duly impressed. I’ve just gone through the first two units and they are a fantastic starting point for any teacher who wanted to teach a film class or just a film unit in an English class.

Now, especially because every teacher doesn’t start with the kind of knowledge and skill that Kate Reed brings to the table, this kind of collaboration between industry and schools can really make for better instruction. I know that I wish I had this curriculum when I first taught New Media at Beacon. I think I would have done a better job.

And again, what I really like about it is a) it’s free. b) its assessments (such that I’ve seen) are hands-on, project-based, rubric-assessed and still tied to broad NCTE (and other) standards. And I like that there’s no option to buy. It’s just good work that IFC has done.

And it’s very good work indeed. It’s not hard to imagine a number of ways that this work could end up as part of the SLA curriculum.