Author Archives: marti11o

Is Design Thinking That Different Than What We Already do as Reflective Practitioners?

Firstly, I want to start by talking about the format I chose to use to do my multimedia reflection on the Technologist Module because it was very frustrating, and I need to get it off my chest. I decided to do a video because it seemed to me that it would be straight forward, and it shouldn’t be too hard to find a software that will give me what I want. Four programs later and I managed to get as close as I could to what I envisioned, with a huge watermark across my video to not have to pay for the program… but let’s not talk about that… Go figure, the only good program is a freemium platform! It also took me several takes for every clip that I have. Having recently had my wisdom teeth removed and losing sensation in half my tongue, as a result of the surgery, it’s hard to properly articulate words. To add onto that, I really didn’t know what to say, so that affected how many takes I had to do. Thankfully we don’t have any more multimedia reflections to do, but I would not do a video again. It was definitely more of a headache than anticipated.
That brings us to a point I mentioned in my video that I want to further talk about now that I’ve struggled to create my video. That point is the one I made about the lengthy process prototyping might be. I felt this while creating my video. It was an extremely lengthy process, and I didn’t even have to continue to change it to accommodate learners. I must say, I don’t have a great deal of digital literacy, as I had mentioned in my first blackboard post, but I do feel I have enough to work my way around certain programs, it just takes me a little longer because I have to research how to achieve certain aspects. I believe it would be absolutely exhausting attempting to continuously work on the prototype to make it perfect, only to have to work on it again with another group of learners. I do realize that even without using technology, as mentioned in my video, that differentiated instruction is important, and that you should constantly be reflecting on your lessons and updating them; however, the incorporation of technology in this process would make it very difficult. And as I mentioned a few times, you have to find the right technology for your classroom for it to work and be appropriate and accommodating.
I do believe that incorporating technology in the classroom is very important to keep students engaged and in the future I will try my best to ensure that I follow the design-thinking, in more than just the incorporation of technology in the classroom, since it’s a good approach to follow for every aspect of teaching.

 

Can’t find that last article to finish your paper? It might be your school stopping you!

After participating in the Open Hashtag Chat on Twitter in class the other day, I decided to try my hand at a Twitter Essay to reflect on Chris Gillard’s article Digital Redlining, Access, and Privacy. It turned out better than I had anticipated, after having failed miserably several times at making a sketchnote. I, basically, learned that I shouldn’t choose anything that involves drawing or planning or really anything too creative.

Now onto more serious business! Before reading Gillard’s article, I didn’t realize redlining was a thing, or maybe more specifically, I didn’t realize it was a term that went farther than schools blocking social media on the school’s network. Redlining wasn’t in my vocabulary at all, not even when it came to neighbourhood segregation. It was definitely an interesting read and a topic that students should know about. As I said in my Twitter essay, I wonder how many times I’ve been redlined from accessing information?

I’m not quite sure I agree with Gillard completely when it comes to redlining being discriminatory (which I go into more detail on Twitter) but new policies should be created to get rid of redlining for good. It shouldn’t matter where you go to school, you should have access to everything. It shouldn’t even matter if you’re in school or not. How many articles are there out there that cost money just to read without access from the University? Are the author’s redlining us? Where is the line drawn?

Image result for draw the line gifs

 

Anyway, to read my full thoughts on the subject, click the thumbs up below, it’ll take you to my Twitter thread! Hope you all enjoy!

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Is There a Digital Ghost Haunting You?

After reading the article Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom by Ashley Hinck, I was given a better understanding of the consequences of constantly using worksheets and pre-made templates in schools for the students’ creativity. Hinck points out that, by using those templates, we are preventing students from being creative and setting them up for what they see as a failure, when they struggle to do something on their own. Especially in a digital sense, when using templates on websites, we are restricting ourselves to a very small number of templates that might not fit what we are trying to express. As I mentioned briefly in the video, I was able to, first hand, experience what Hinck was talking about. I was becoming very frustrated working on this video because it was far from straight forward. I did what I could manage and below you will find that doodle video, made on Animaker. The video summarizes the points I thought were most important from the article, as well as touches on a few of my feelings on the topic, which may resonate with you or you may disagree with! Cheers.

https://youtu.be/r6MIjSSPVCM

My link doesn’t seem to want to cooperate but this Nelly song does, so partly to prove that I wasn’t lacking digital skills and just didn’t know how to do it (and I did trial-and-error several things), partly because throwback Nelly is great, and partly because it was only just a dream that I thought everything would work out smoothly, I decided to leave it here for you guys to enjoy! Just don’t forget to click on the hyperlink above to see my video!