#UWinDig

I chose to read “Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom” by Ashley Hinck and decided to use Twitter for my reflection. I thought Twitter would offer a nice template (character limit) while allowing for some freedom of creativity (the tweets themselves, GIFS, images, etc).

While going through the article it allowed me to reflect on many past projects between the faculty of education, faculty of human kinetics, high school and elementary school which were very template oriented focused mainly on the drag and drop aspect as mentioned in the article.

There are so many useful tools and resources on the world wide web. And there are many platforms which allow for open-ended learning and exploration, but the expectations and assumptions of templates linger in the classroom. These template platforms set the tone for another way that students “try to get the right answers”. But the question is, are the students learning anything from these platforms? The notion that students find trial and error as a failure is baffling to me, I think that students have such a fear of failure that they look for the simple, straight shot answer. Using shortcut template platforms resonate with today’s society of getting to the destination as quick and as easy as possible – students often use these platforms as a scapegoat to try and please their teachers by doing what they think their teacher is expecting and wants.

Below are some screenshots from my Twitter thread, and the link to my thread is right here –> https://twitter.com/guchimane1/status/1046273261972201472 

In episode 10 Questioning Learning of the podcast HybridPod, host Chris Friend and guest Amy Collier engaged in an informative discussion about the flaws of blindly adhering to standardized pedagogies.  One of the  important concepts from the discussion was the necessity for teachers to take risks and deviate from standardized models in order to meet individual student needs and maximize student potential.  I decided to outline a few of the issues of standardized pedagogies described by Amy Collier using an infographic as it was an effective way to visually represent the important details of the discussion. To create the infographic I used the website Canva.  This was my first experience using this website, and while there were limitations and struggles, it was a very easy site to navigate and proved to be a useful tool.

Eric Dunmore

I chose to look at the article, “Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom” by Ashley Hinck. A link to the article:

Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom

The main focus of this article is that though we are trying to push students towards becoming their own creators and innovators, we are not completely moving away from the standardized model because of the platforms and websites we choose for them to work with. For example, through the use of templates such as Canva, we are still continuing the traditional school culture, where the authority is placed on the teacher and the app’s hand. Because of the limited number of open spaces for student work, and less opportunity for exploration, we are gearing students towards the model of having one “correct” method of creating. Hinck also points out that even when we try to move away from these websites and templates, it continues to crawl up in student work, as they draw on their past experiences from within their school work and their digital world. One of the key issue is that students are used to everything being done for them so easily, that having to start from scratch becomes quite challenging for them and the many trial and errors they face is perceived as a failure from their viewpoint.

As a student and a future educator, I do agree with the article’s perspective. However, I do find myself in a bit of a contradiction as to where I stand on this issue. I am the type of person, though I believe can be quite creative when needed, prefers a guided model or a beginning tool, to help me get going and get creative. By bringing up that point, I do not necessarily agree that using these websites align with standardized education model, since the argument is that they are continuing to narrow down student creativity and exploration. I believe a good balance of guidance, with the opportunity to make your own creation is an important factor in ensuring we can meet the learning needs of every type of student. I personally was and still is, the type of student who would be completely lost and have a brain fart if I were given no template or platform to help me get started.

Below is the link to my infographic.

https://create.piktochart.com/output/32986350-new-piktochart

Multimedia artifact #1

For my first multimedia reflection assignment I chose to read the Hinck article titled Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom. The author begins by stating that students today are fascinated with digital media and love to create it. However, most tend to use predominantly “drag and drop” models which recall the students as container education theories of the past. This method of education saw students as a tabula rasa (blank slate) which needed to be filled with the right answers which educators neatly provided to them. The process of education was seen to be linear with no room for deviation, student centered learning or creativity.

The author argues that these popular template/shortcut platforms mimic this archaic way of viewing students and education. These sites can be seen that way because they have predetermined settings with little to no room for students to make individual choices or display creativity. If, as educators, we encourage our students to create their own meaning and connections in the classroom, why should we not do the same when it comes to digital media?

In the article it is also pointed out that when students are asked to struggle through the process of working with HTML coding or CSS they often get frustrated and see any challenge as a personal failure. The old linear way of thinking still haunts students. They are uncomfortable with making mistakes and trying to fix them, they just want to achieve success (the “right” answer) and have a finished product.

I myself struggle with this phenomenon. My ineptitude with digital media and technology has, on more than one occasion, caused much anxiety and feelings of personal failure. In beginning to create my Piktochart infographic artifact I was nervous at just the thought of having to create my own content and share it in a digital space. I spent quite some time struggling to try to get everything to look just as I wanted. I had to look a few things up and ultimately learned a few tricks along the way (like how to mask pictures together to get different shapes). The process was uncomfortable but I kept Hinck’s article in mind throughout and kept on.

In moving towards a better future with our students, we have to learn from mistakes and try to employ digital media to teach them to create original content. Part of doing so is to show them that the road to success is filled with many mistakes and that working to fix these mistakes ensures progress. Students need to learn to value progress and problem solving over rushing to create a finished product. When they can achieve that, we can empower them to see themselves as valuable makers, creators and speakers in the digital world.

-Alyssa Poole

Ashley Hinck’s article, Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom, discusses the expectations that students have with digital media, and the stark difference between teacher centered versus student centered media education. Beginning this assignment, I assumed that it would be a linear process in which I would cobble together some words, drag and drop some pictures and then I would be guaranteed a working final piece. Having now completed this assignment, that was certainly not the case. I found it very difficult to get started, as I wasn’t sure exactly what to do. I didn’t have a set linear procedure to guide me through the steps that I needed to complete in order to get my finished artifact. There is also no set answer to this assignment, which is very different than the standard teacher centered courses that made up the majority of my university career. With the assignment I found myself being forced to be creative and try some new things that were certainly outside of my comfort zone.

I initially started with the standard template websites such as Canva because it was easiest to use a template rather than design something myself. I decided however to try MindMup as it was much more open and it gave me some creative freedom to come up with a project that was entirely mine. Coming up with my own design was very rewarding to me as I had to troubleshoot through problems, and there were a good number of problems, as well as tinker with the project with the inputs that I was given in class by the professor and my colleagues. I found it very satisfying using MindMup and learning the inherent issues that came with that software in order to come up with a final product.

MindMup

-Brandan Joyce

For my multimedia reflection, I decided to do a Powtoon that summarizes what I believe to be the main points of the article Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom by Ashley Hinck.

Click the image to view the video

[Disclaimer: I have never used Powtoon before and I did not realize that the trial runs out even after exporting the video on their site so do look past the “PRO” and “PRO+” watermarks as I am actually incredibly bitter about this  ]

ANYWAY

Throughout the article, Ashley Hinck makes many valid points about the use of shortcut/template methods and the effects that these methods have on students and students’ creativity. Personally, in my own academic endeavors I have found that many of the digital creations I have made for assignments (including this response with Powtoon) have been heavily reliant on drag and drop platforms that allow for me to get my point across as easy and hassle free as possible. However, even though these platforms are incredibly easy to use and usually allow you to finish creating a product in no time at all, in my own experiences I have also found them to be immensely frustrating. In the creation of this Powtoon alone, there were many different things I would have loved to add to the slides that were not available in the resources the site provides and it did limit me a lot in that aspect. On another note, something else that is also really frustrating about a lot of these shortcut/template websites are their freemium services (something we had talked about in class previously). These sites give you a trial and let you use all services it has to offer in order to give you a taste of the capabilities and then suddenly all of those premium services disappear which makes the website even more limiting to the user if they want to use it again.

Of all the years I have been in school, most digital assignments were created with the intent of using easy shortcut/template websites and platforms that you can get easy marks from by following the step-by-step guidelines given to you. With that being said, I have also had the experience of taking a few of these courses in my time that have required me to utilize more open-ended platforms to create a finished product; assignments that were given little limitations. In one of said courses, we were expected to create a website about ourselves using HTML to do so. It was highly recommended by the professor to create these websites from scratch; however, due to the time constraints of the assignment and the few requirements that I needed to meet, I decided to take the easy route (something that I am sure we all have been accustomed to at some point). I ended up finding a website that was similar to the way that I wanted mine and used it as a template, changing things here and there to make it my own. It is not something I am proud of, but is something that I was reminded of when reading about students in Ashley’s class and their similar experiences with HTML. I found that it was much easier to create something out of something else, rather than creating something entirely out of nothing and I am sure this is a result of years of drag and drop. So, to make myself feel better about that entire situation, I feel that it is safe to say that the digital ghosts made me do it…

All things considered, I hope that some day I will truly learn how to break free of all the shortcut/template ghosts and truly utilize more open-ended platforms for my future creations. There has already been a few times in past where a drag and drop template just wasn’t doing it for me and I forced myself to utilize Photoshop out of frustration instead, but I don’t want to look at open-ended platforms as a last resort in order to get my points across – I would love to seek them out first some day.

– Jessie Vanderveen