Ain’t Afraid of No Digital Ghosts

Technology is a center point to society today and is fundamental to how it functions. With deep-rooted ties to society, it permeates into education. The permeation can prove to be finicky because of improper applications of these external societal resources not fully being useful for students. It is the equivalency of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. In the article, Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom by Ashley Hinck there is the argument for teachers to recognize through their use of technology in their pedagogy the dangers of using templated work. The article is a strong piece that acknowledges that students will not always know the ins and outs of coding and have the skills necessary to maximize their technology and creativity at the same time. There is the concept that Hinck argues that teachers in their pedagogy need to realize how to limit the conformity of templates, yet maximizing the creative results. This concept resonated with me because templates are the foundations to most interactive learning because it allows for that individualized student-centered contributions, yet those same templates are argued to build conformity which is detrimental to this teaching philosophy. Hinck I may not fully agree with for some of their ideas, but they presented information that forces teachers to be leary on the usage of templates within the classroom. This connects directly with the fact that my template has proven limited in how I can manipulate the photos and what I can do with the structure. Hinck argued that there are limitations on templates and this is echoed throughout the process of creating my artifact. On the other side, however, the effort and time that would need to be put in to create the infographic through coding it would have been far more problematic. There would have been issues if even one line of code was off and therefore the amount of trial and error that would take place would bog down the creative ideas. It would force the creator to weigh whether it would have been worth it to add certain information and I would have limited the construction of my infographic if I had to use something like CSS. I found that through my experience of creating this infographic that I had to reflect on tools that I have used in the past. As explained in the infographic there are concerns with Kahoot because they are only tapping into the remember and maybe the understanding levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy which is not where an educator wants to reach for a template based learning tool. From there this made me think about where it falls on the SAMR model and that it was only a substitution form. The Hinck article made me critically reflect on what resources that I have in my tech teaching toolbox and showing me that it was lacking.