#UWinDig

This post will provide a detailed response to the article Digital Ghost in the Modern Classroom by Ashley Hinck. I have decided to share my response in the form of an info graphic using Piktochart. Please follow the link below to check out my response to the article, as well as a short summary of the main ideas Hinck focuses on in her article.

While completing this multimedia response, I felt like I was directly going against what Hinck talks about in her article because of the fact that I used a template to create my Piktochart. However, this experience enforced the part of my reflection that mentions the importance of starting students off with template based websites when they are learning to create because if I was forced to create a multimedia response without being able to use Piktochart or another template/shortcut based website I would have been ten times more anxious going into it then I was.

Piktochart: https://create.piktochart.com/output/32889791-new-piktochart

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.

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Full view again (magnified):

After reading the article Digital Ghosts in the Classroom by Ashley Hinck, I chose to complete an infographic to outline the main takeaways from this paper. In this article, Hinck describes how remnants of previous (older) forms of digital media are currently impacting the way in which student’s creativity and individuality are manifested in the present. More specifically, Hinck describes how students have come to expect that there is a “right answer” for every question or situation that is presented to them, rather than than taking an individualistic or creative approach to arrive at their own solution. After studying the article, I felt as though this tendency to look for one specific answer proved very detrimental to the students, as they were so focused on being correct that they actually lost the majority of their ability to be creative and find novel solutions. This feeling of requiring a “right answer” is something I can personally relate to after completing this assignment, as I am very much a linear learner. Therefore, I found it difficult at times to stay on task and keep in mind where my infographic was ultimately going. As someone who has grown up utilizing various forms of social media such as Facebook and Instagram, I can see in my own work how these forms of digital media ghosts have influenced my own work and creative abilities. More specifically, this assignment and the readings that accompanied it made me realize that my level of creativity and comfort bubble when using these more open forms of digital media (such as the attached infographic) have been heavily impacted by my relatively frequent use of “drag-and-drop” and structured media forms. When I began reading this article, I thought of how detrimental this decrease in creativity and ingenuity could be on students effected by it; but never realized that I may be one of them. However, in my critical analysis of the article, I came to realize that I was very much one of the students who had been influenced by these digital ghosts of structured media forms, without even being aware of it. This ultimately struct me as concerning, as it made me realize that every day we can be negatively impacted by forms of media that many of us include in the “required” section of our daily lives. Overall, I was forced to step out of my comfort zone in creating this infographic, and thus faced a number of challenges in utilizing an entirely new form of media. That being said, I feel as though I have produced a product of digital media that has proven useful for both myself, as well as the people who will be viewing the finished product.

For my assignment, I chose to respond to the article Digital Ghosts in the Classroom by Ashley Hinck. In the article, the author talks about how she is a teacher in a technology class and how students are afraid to fail. She explains that this is because popular template programs are easy to use and present little to no risk of failure. In her class students do coding, meaning producing a “working product” at the end is a huge success. She identifies that a student’s believe digital media making is simply a series of linear steps, with a guaranteed working product at the end, which is not the case. Her class also required students to code their projects in HTML, I can only imagine how steep of a learning curve that would be. Hinck presents her theories on modern education in the article, describing how she believes students entire education is like a template platform; a student performs a series of designed steps, produces a correct answer, and has no risk of failure. I believe she is onto something with that school of thought, you can apply that model of thinking to nearly any course and it is accurate. Here is the link to the article: http://hybridpedagogy.org/digital-ghosts-modern-classroom/

I can relate to this “comfortable path” as I almost chose to do a PowerPoint for this assignment, however, I stepped out of my comfort zone and was able to do a SketchNote. I really enjoyed the process of thinking out how I wanted the final product to look, and figuring out how to illustrate key points in the article. I chose to do the SketchNote because I have never tried anything like this before and thought it would be a good way to experience a new medium. Overall, the learning curve was steep, I had to think about the article in a way that was different from just putting the information summarized into a PowerPoint, but I think I managed to produce something effective in learning. My experience creating the artifact related greatly to the text from the article because I was required to think of the information in a creative way. Hinck says “digital making is not a series of linear steps” as I was working on my SketchNote, I realized how true that is; I often changed my mind and had new ideas pop into my head that ended up altering the final product from how I originally envisioned it. Lastly, in using this medium I found a clear connection to teaching and learning as I continued to create new ideas for my SketchNote, I found the material from the text made more sense to me and deepened my understanding on the topic.

Also, sorry everyone this is sideways.. I have rotated it multiple times and it never stays in landscape mode when I save it.

I chose to the do the article rather than the podcast because I found that the article peaked my interest more and was able to better understand the article better than the podcast. The article Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom by Ashley Hinck and reviewed by Gregory Zobel, Jessica Knott, and Maha Balihad peaked many things for myself but I decided to specifically to discuss how both teachers and students react to digital media in the classroom as well their experiences.

I found as I read the article that most students are facing the same issues. Some of these issues are that students are afraid of failing and pushing the limits, they would rather think outside of the box because they think it will turn bad if they do so. As teachers, we try to make students more comfortable different media platforms but when teachers try to help students they give them that look like they have four eyes and don’t understand you. I felt as though the students and teachers were so interconnected because we as teachers can learn so much from students as they can from us. The method I decided to use express was a self-made mind map. I thought that this would be the best method to use for the teacher-student similarity.

I used different colours to draw your eyes to different parts of the mind map, I also included a school which is placed in the centre of the mind map because schooling is the central part of this entire article and needs to be the main focus.