For my reflection assignment, I chose to read the Hinck article Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom. In the article, the author discusses the use of digital skills and how they are becoming more important in our modern day. However, the author argues that many technological platforms are restricting a st
udent’s creativity by making them believe there is only one right way of accomplishing tasks similarly to standardized education. Moreover, through these platforms, users are not developing the digital skills needed to succeed. Instead, these technological platforms such as Piktochart which I used to create my poster, has preset templates which allows users to use a drag-and-drop 
method. Although this copy and paste method ultimately makes the process easier and faster, it also tends to limits creativity and exploration. Having made a poster myself, I can say that the templates and preset images made it easy for me to not be a creator. To add on, having to use a platform that I was unfamiliar with caused much frustration and anxiety because I was not getting the results I wanted. While creating my Piktochart, I had a vision but I found the search engine for Piktochart restricted me because I could not find the images I was looking for. Using Piktochart for the first time was challenging due to my lack of knowledge of this medium.
The author states that we should be avoiding shortcuts similarly to Piktochart and instead we should be encouraging our students to become makers, creators and speakers by teaching and providing them with the necessary skills and resources. In order do so, we as educators need to teach the students in the process to embrace their struggles and we need to encourage trial and error. I strongly agree with Hinck that we should be encouraging students to explore and make mistakes in the process because that is the best way to learn. Sometimes it is not about the end result and more so about how we got there.
