Greetings and hello fellow bloggers,
For this week’s assignment I decided to work to highlight the important pieces of the article within problematically-template-crafted and mildly informative memes.
I tried to hit the most important points including:
The Evaluation of Template Software:
Only when we are truly lost can we be found.
The deconstruction of the “open-ended” project:
A project that appears to have the breadth of an ocean, but in actuality covers the area of a swimming pool is still, for all intents and purposes, a worksheet.
The Problematic Traditional Teaching Mindset
“Traditional school culture and the banking model of education…views students as containers to be filled with correct answers by teachers.” Ashley Hinck
How Students Choose to Operate:
Students are looking to finish work in the easiest and most stress free manner. They are not doing your 5% assignment to feel fulfilled.
How Students Feel When Their Usual Tools Are Removed
“When students assume there are linear, standard steps to follow, students perceive their hesitancy and trial-and-error as a failure, rather than an unavoidable and important part of the digital making process.” Ashley Hinck
And Finally, the Solution:
It is not enough to simply remove the training wheels. We must also give them an environment where they are free to practice judgement free.
To create these memes I used a site called imgflip.com that allowed me to pick my template from the archive of the internet and form fill my memes to be exactly what I wanted.
Easy as top-text, bottom-text, laughter
While I am a proud meme-dad to all present here, “The Solution” is by far my favorite son/daughter/digital-entity because it discusses the problem of just analyzing this situation at face value. If as a teacher you notice your students rarely branch from their “comfort-zone apps” and your way of getting them out of that comfort-zone is just to remove them from use, you are going about this completely wrong. Creation is scary, especially for those who have never done so unassisted and on their own before. ADDING THE PRESSURE OF A GRADE DOESN’T CHANGE THAT! Thus, we must create new projects that revel more in trying out a program and experimenting with its strengths and weaknesses rather than continuing to grade a finished project.