#UWinDig

Technologist is an e campus run by a group of Northern Ontario post-secondary institutions and funded by the Government of Ontario. This site provides a vast amount of information regarding the integration, understanding, and communication of technological tools within a learning environment. While the site itself is a great idea to promote digital literacy and application to educators, it is very easy to get lost among all the links that lead to outside resources. While a variety of sources can showcase different viewpoints and ideas, having too many all in one place takes away from the overall site itself. How hard would it be for educators to find these links themselves without having to go through multiple side pages to reach them? In addition, some of the links had more information than on the Technologist site!

I decided to use a piktograph/inforgraph for this multimedia assignment for a few reasons: 1. I wanted to simplify all the information from the website in an organized and easy to follow format. 2. I was asked not to do another mind map and was inspired to try something new (although I did add a small throwback to my first multimedia assignment by including my pacman mindmap)  and 3. I have never used piktograph before and, considering design-learning is all about trying new things, I figured I would expand upon my own digital  literacy and try this website out.

I chose to use a blank format for this assignment to allow myself more creative opportunities. I utilized a lot of the text blocks that were provided and tried to make it as colourful and informative as I could. Honestly, I really appreciated the fact that I did not have to create everything from scratch like I did with my previous mind maps! I really enjoyed using this site. I wish I had more time to really explore all the potential creative avenues piktograph.com has (on a free account of course).

I highlighted key vocabulary from the website that I felt really defined each category. I used these words as starting points to expanding upon my ideas (rather than the actual titles of each category). However, each category is sectioned off by the titles found on the website. A lot of the information is also from the various links provided by the website such as, the empathy map and the methodologies and approaches to design thinking.

I think Technologist is a good starting point to learning about digital literacies and design thinking concepts, but I would not use it as my only resource (even Technologist added extra resources within their site). In fact, I had to look elsewhere for a few terms found on Technologist because it did not give a clear example (or one that I connected with). I believe this was the most challenging aspect of this assignment: trying to properly articulate the information (or lack there of) from the Technologist site.

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Here we go again! My second multimedia assignment may lack sticky notes, but it still maintains an ample amount of colour and creativity. This time around I created a Venn diagram because Dr. Jacobson’s article, ‘Teaching in a Participatory Digital World‘, explains how both students and teachers utilize technology to motivate and adapt their ongoing learning experiences in the classroom. Since I already made a sketch note with my first multimedia assignment, I figured a Venn diagram would be the next best thing because it visually represents how students and teachers collaborate with each other and/or technology to benefit their educational lives. Each circle represents the roles of what students, teachers, and technology contribute and are expected of in the participatory digital learning world.

While I found this article to be a bit repetitive, I used that as inspiration to create the Venn diagram. Since so many of Dr. Jacobson’s ideas and comments were similar to each other or inter-connected, I used that to my advantage. Personally, I’m more of a pencil and paper kind of person, but I can definitely see the benefit of incorporating digital media in the classroom. There are so many fantastic resources and teaching tools online that can be used to really enhance the classroom learning environment. As teachers-in-training, it’s important to pay attention to this quote, “we cannot shut down the education system while teachers retool their practices and jurisdictions bring technological infrastructures up to standard.” With that being the case, it’s a great idea to start exploring online teaching forums and resources now to be prepared before we become permanent educators. However, my only concern regarding digital learning is the legitimacy of knowledge and information being shared. I’m surprised that Dr. Jacobsen barely touched upon teaching students how to critique digital learning practices; especially when “fake news” is extremely common in today’s world. Also, sometimes learning from your peers doesn’t always result in academic inquiry; especially if you and your peers are younger students. There are lot of online distractions that teachers must be aware of before allowing their students to utilize the digital world.

Considering this Venn diagram is hand-written, I still wanted to incorporate the participatory aspect of the article using online sources. Therefore, I created a Facebook group called ‘Memes for Education’ and invited 13 of my friends to participate. Their goal was to react only using gifs or memes to my comments/quotes/questions I had from the article. I also included a few posts that had them communicate and react to each other’s comments and it turned out to be a hilarious and insightful project. I chose to film their responses because it will showcase the gifs and I cannot post the discussion without adding everyone in the class into the group. (A few videos posted below).

The most challenging part about this assignment was organizing the roles and connections stated throughout the article and where (and how) they fit on the diagram. I didn’t have as much space as my previous sketch note so I had to condense my summaries while making sure I still got the point across. I also had to make sure I kept this neat, yet still appealing to look at. The information outside of the diagram represents some of the benefits and skills you’ll learn/need after participating in a digital learning environment.

Overall, I really enjoyed this article and believes it advocates for digital learning practices in a positive way. I think it’s important for students and teachers to stay up to date with real world situations and technical advancements. Learning about and utilizing them in an education setting is a great (and safe) place to start in the ongoing learning process.

Left side:

Bottom and connections:

      <— Tech and students <—-tech and teachers   <– all three

Right:

Since the article, ‘Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom’ by Ashley Hinck discusses stepping away from using short cuts/templates in the classroom and with digital media, I decided to do that as well. I found it ironic that the websites we were encouraged to use for this assignment are prime examples of a template format. Therefore, I decided to make a mind map using sticky notes. The variety of colours and shapes definitely allows the text to stand out, and the pictures are both hand drawn and printed from the internet. I decided to go with a Pacman theme because I believe it’s a creative spin that plays off the idea of ‘digital ghosts’. I really enjoyed this article because it encouraged teachers and students to take creative risks and develop their problem solving skills. I think it’s important for students to learn that failing is fine, as long as you keep trying and never give up. While using guidelines can be useful at the beginning to learn the basics, students should slowly be eased into more independent assignments. Students will have a much more difficult experience if they are forced to immediately avoid using templates. It could even discourage them from being creative in the future.

I think one of the most challenging aspects of this project was being able to keep everything organized and still being creative. I had to create an attention-grabbing item that, at the same time, didn’t overload the senses. Ironically, summarizing the article was the easiest part of this assignment because of the amount of time literally brainstorming how my brainstorm would look. I think using sticky notes turned out to be a great idea for this project because it forced me to shy away from the norm of just writing ideas down on a mind map. With sticky notes, I had to focus on shape and colour coordination and ask: how much text can I fit on one? Do I have enough space to fit all of my ideas on this board? How will these sticky notes affect how many pictures I use? At the end of the day there is one thing I know for certain: I’m definitely keeping my distance from sticky notes for a while.

Just in case you can’t read everything:

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Full view again (magnified):