I have chosen to read and reflect on Ashley Hinck’s article entitled: Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom.
In short she sparks a discussion about template and short cut media making platforms available to students today such as, Canva and WIX, and how these platforms are ultimately hindering their creative learning process. You see when a student is limited by a rigid number of designs, styles and inputs they can only be as creative as the program allows them to be. There is very little in the way of trial and error as one can simply drag and drop from a menu. Slowly these programs are turning our students into robots that can follow a linear path of instructions to reach a common, and often predicted, outcome. This path convinces students that at the end of their media assignment there is a correct way to display their ideas and an incorrect way to do so, based on the teacher instructions and the limitations of the programs suggested to them. However, this is a false notion and will cause them great disadvantages as they move forward. These individuals will not be able to handle failure when faced with a creative challenge they must complete on their own, ads they have not developed the skills to start from scratch and learn through the mistakes.
To banish these “ghost” platforms Hinck makes many suggestions. First she states that, as educators it is our job to analyze the tech we are using inside of our classroom but also what is absent. Perhaps introducing more open-ended and free form programs such as, Raspberry Pi, Scratch, CSS and Python to entice students to build from the ground up something they can be proud of. These programs demand trial and error (especially error) in order to better ones ability to create. She also used LEGO as an example outside of classrooms, some sets have instructions that meet and end goal but the pieces can be put together in so many ways without instruction that the opportunity to create is nearly endless.
All in all, she is asking us to think about the skills and outlooks we want our students to have when they leave our classroom and look deeply into the tools we use to do so. Students are not jars that we just fill with correct answers hoping they will one day come out on top. We need to teach them how to see failure as growth and be proud of finding skills on their own.
I whole heartedly agree with what Hinck is saying in this article and it honestly made me realize that although I have some knowledge of these open ended systems I too am a product of ghosts. Especially for this project, I used Piktochart which is a drag and drop template website. I chose a template, wrote words and found images to match my thoughts. I did not know how to stretch the medium more to what I envisioned so I went with what it already provided. I am pleased with the outcome however saddened by my compliance to it and lack of questioning what I could have done differently.
Please see my Infographic below:
