The article by Ashley Hinck Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom summarizes the stigma that students have regarding digital technology. The author makes compelling points regarding students thinking that digital technology is simple and “drag and drop” and “HTML”. The authors mention of HTML is really interesting to me as growing up almost everybody around my age owned a MySpace page. On MySpace students knowingly or unknowingly used basic HTML to format their page! I assume that this led to students conception of thinking digital technology is all “HTML” due to their prior learning experiences.
The author suggests that digital technology should not be taught like a worksheet and digital technology does not have to be “linear” even though that is how it was previously taught. From my semi-recent high school experience I can attest that digital technology was definitely taught in a linear fashion. Students were given a literal worksheet and was told to follow specific instructions in order to make your name flash (using HTML code). Students thought that this class was lame and boring. I believe it is important as future educators to adjust our learning techniques and content to allow students opportunities to be creative. I think that the current way digital technology is being taught does not allow “failure” which as a result does not allow creativity. I created a short video as my Multimedia Reflection explaining the authors article and my thoughts on it. I thoroughly enjoyed this assignment and I believe that this assignment is an exact example what the author is trying to teach us about digital technology education! I hope you enjoy and feel free to discuss below.
This is my first time ever creating something of this nature, and I felt like stepping out of my “comfort” zone for this assignment creating a YouTube video.
Article: http://hybridpedagogy.org/digital-ghosts-modern-classroom/