#UWinDig

This blog post is a response to the interview conducted by Chris Friend with Amy Collier regarding critical digital pedagogy and the concept of not yet-ness. My thoughts and the key points presented in the podcast are briefly summarized in my sketchnote. I choose to do a sketchnote for this post partially because of the structure of the interview. In the interview, the concept of not yet-ness is the main focus. Not yet-ness is simply a term used to describe the feeling of trying something new but not really getting what is going on. In a pedagogical sense, it can refer to teachers trying new and riskier teaching methods without fully getting or understanding the end result. Throughout the interview, Amy contrasts this teaching method with the traditional pedagogy, which can be described as learnification. Learnification refers to the transition from teaching to learning at higher education. It also places an emphasis on individualized learning. Therefore, my sketchnote highlights the defining features of each pedagogical method as two paths that new teachers can travel down. I want to present a contrast in my multimedia reflection as described in the podcast.

The key difference between learnification and not yet-ness is presence of risk. The traditional and commonly used method “de-risk” the situation as Amy describes it. Students are assessed similarly and learning outcomes are formulaic. Teachers can efficiently assess the students and the risk of things going wrong is much lower because all the variables are removed. In a sense, having something stable and unchanging is very appealing in consideration of one’s career. From my perspective, I do believe that the concept of learnification is faulty. However, I do not believe that all the connotations attached to it are bad. For example, formulaic assessments may not totally be a bad thing. At higher education, when class sizes become too large, it becomes incredibly inefficient to consider and satisfy the needs of individual students. I believe that teachers and professors do consider this when formulating their learning outcomes and designing their lesson plans. However, this does not mean that teachers cannot engage in risk-taking from time to time (from what I learned in Pedagogy of the Arts course, risk-taking is the best form of learning). I believe that good teachers do take risks at times, to design lesson plans and learning outcomes that excite the student and themselves as a result of students’ work. I strongly agree with Amy that teachers should drive curiosity and improve the educational experience of students. With not yet-ness, teachers have a lot of room to grow and reflect through mistakes and uncertainties (self-reflection is incredibly important for effective teaching as highlighted in Philosophy course). If I must summarize my point of view, I will say that different situation calls for different needs. Good teachers will know how to differentiate between the two and take the correct path when needed to improve learning for students.

The other reason I choose to do a sketchnote is because I want to try out a new form of “note-taking”. Throughout my academic career, I have taken many notes but doing a sketchnote makes me realize that adding a visual element can really make my notes and points appealing to readers (including myself). With sketchnote, I learn how to effectively summarize the key ideas and points and demonstrate the link between various aspects of the presentation. I notice that I retain the information much easier than with a text-only note. With the increasing demand that teachers be more digitally literate, I believe that this multimedia reflection gives me a great opportunity to try out a different form of response and develop my skills in this area. I hope to improve myself in sketchnoting and in other platforms that I may use in the future.

Edit: Added link to interview

Edit 2: From all the wonderful comments below, I just want to say that sketchnote is definitely a consideration for me when it comes to teaching. I am not sure how it will work yet, but I guess this reinforces the point that Amy Collier makes when it comes to critical pedagogy, that new teachers take risks and try something new. In a sense, that sensation can be described as not yet-ness.

I am responding to the Hybrid pedagogy article; Digital ghosts in the modern classroom by Ashley Hinck. This article describes the tendency of students to use online templates for assignments and even for social media. She describes the templates as limiting, a drag and drop platform leaving no room for creativeness and invention. These templates are easier to use but students do not learn anything from them. The author challenges her students to use different platforms that allow for them to invent their own theme as well as look at different social media sites with a critical eye. Wonder why they limit words, why the profile picture is in that location and how they incorporate task bars in their websites. This will give the students a better understanding of the technological age in which they live. I found this article to be surprisingly interesting. After the author made these points I was able to see that students fall back on these templates out of comfort level, because the work is already done for them and because they are afraid to step outside of the box. A template simply gives them someone’s ideas so that they don’t have to use their brain to solve a problem. These students see a problem and run away instead of confronting it. Ashley mentions that they are afraid of trial and error they feel as though the answer should just be right there in front of them. This is a very narrow mindset that is often enforced on students; that there is only one right answer and it is the end of the world to get the wrong one. I have outlined many of the problems with templates and solutions that the author has suggested integrated with my own ideas as well as why I believe the students choose to use templates in a mind map below: hope you enjoy!

click link to for better view —> Templates are destroying creativity

My colleagues and I are very fortunate to be the first generation that had technology integrated into our classroom. However, there is a time and place for everything. Online courses have not been around for too long, and we can see that they are not as productive as we would hope for. However online courses might be able to become friendlier. On the podcast, they discussed several alternatives to engage students more in an online setting.

The Piktochart itself was so simple to make. I can see myself using this in my professional career in both math and physics. The first use that comes to mind is online posters for the students to look at before the subject is taught. For example, for Classical Mechanics (a chapter in Physics that studies motion), perhaps have animations of cars driving faster than other cars, or different weights falling. I could also incorporate some text in the form of bullet points, next to the images to stimulate their thinking. It would be great for my students to look at for 5 minutes the night before the lesson. Just to give them some basic ideas on what we’ll be talking about. I strongly recommend to all of my colleagues to try this application because it is super user-friendly. Just make sure to use Google Chrome since Internet Explorer is not compatible with the website.

In this multimedia reflection on the article Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom by Ashley Hinck, I chose to display my thoughts in the form of a sketchnote.  Through sketchnote, I was able to show the two different paths that we can teach and demonstrate to students. There is the shortcut route, which is the road that most students take by using templates, drag and drop methods, standardized steps and a guaranteed working final product. Although this route is not preferred due to limiting the creativity of the student, I placed a yellow light at the beginning of the road opposed to a red light to inform students to proceed with caution. This path is not necessarily the wrong path but it is a path that does not show the students full potential. To get the students to show their full potential without the digital ghost in the classroom we need educators to lead students to take risks and encourage them to be creators from a blank canvas.  By taking the longer path that may provide a challenge to the students will lead them to a one of a kind masterpiece that is not influenced by the digital ghost or an easy to fill in template. When doing my sketch note, Choose the Creative Path, I felt that I began with a blank canvas eliminating the digital ghost and templates from my reflection. Starting off with a blank canvas definitely had its challenges, mainly just the challenge of starting but it allowed me to use my full creative potential.