#UWinDig 2020

http://hybridpedagogy.org/digital-ghosts-modern-classroom/

For this assignment, I decided to explore Hincks article called ‘‘Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom’’ to delineate the critical digital pedagogy. Hinks focuses on the linear way of learning that our school systems have ultimately developed. It was a very interesting topic to read because Hincks also incorporated and analyzed the different roles, effects, and applications that the media has on K-12 students. Throughout the article, there are diverse questions that got brought up discussing whether or not these shortcut/template websites are killing student’s creativity. I agree with the statement that school systems are killing student’s creativity due to the fact that teachers are promoting websites that are very user-friendly and offer pre-made templates with copy and paste features. In the past, I found these programs to be exceptional and convenient; however, I have concluded that students lack opportunities to express their creativity and imagination. Consequently, we are encouraging students to use shortcut/template-based applications in which their learning diminishes, and they do not gain any valuable skills. Are we praising students for following rigid instructions to achieve an overall expectation? Yes, yes we are.

Personally, my classroom experiences have also included these shortcut template features. Every student was at a different level, and I found that by using these pre-designed templates, it justified that every student was forced to start with an identical base. Based on my teaching and learning comprehension thus far, my future students should be compelled to contribute their thoughts, and not be frightened to take risks while exploring a variety of softwares. I will allow my future students to have freedom in order to explore self-expression, creativity, and analytical thinking. I included keywords that circled the main image of the brain featured in my Glogster because I found these qualities to be very important when I was a student. Based on my experiences, not only will my students learn from me, but I will learn from them. The year I obtain my Bachelor of Education is not the year that I stop learning. With that being said, I will continuously strive to attend conferences, additional courses/qualifications and discuss with my colleagues. 

Additionally, this technological barrier that co-exists amongst generations may be concerning the teacher’s inability to fully understand the technology and their willingness to experiment with the digital technological education process. Even if educators leave the templates and long-established worksheets behind, and apply technologies that encourage risk-taking, exploration and intuition, the expectations still linger in the classroom affecting student’s willingness to experiment with different learning approaches. Nonetheless, a good number of teachers are adapted to traditional school cultures designing one correct method to attain the ‘right answer’. With that being said, it generates students to feel frightened to take risks because they are afraid of the trial-and-error process. The trial-and-error processes are very important for students to gain valuable knowledge and application-based skills in the field because they will ultimately learn from their mistakes. I believe students do not experiment with different software’s because they are comfortable, and they expect instant gratification with an immediate payout; however, if we slowly begin to implement changes, we can convince students that results will be more rewarding and successful at the end. In educational settings, it is crucial to learn and get accustomed to using more complex and challenging softwares in order to fully achieve expectations.

To conclude, I do not suppose these changes will happen overnight. However, with time, knowledge, and experience, educators will properly begin to implement new technology into their classrooms. As we learned in our Digital Tech classroom, chairs are a technology that conceptualizes behaviour, and students are always the ones sitting in the chairs while the teacher is standing, so all the attention is directed towards him/her. However, teaching is not all about the classroom setup, relationships with students or lesson plans, it is about adding concrete technologies that are missing in classrooms. In the near future, I look forward to guiding my students in becoming exceptional creators and individual thinkers. This article has provided me a whole new perspective on digital media and inclusivity in classrooms, and I firmly believe we should distance ourselves from the shortcut/template and copy and paste features. By doing so, educational institutions will lean towards creative applications that will explore self-expression and invoke risk-taking skills.

Leave the shortcut/template websites behind!

The future generations are full of capable creators!

For this assignment, I decided to use Glogster! It was my first time experiencing with this website, as I wanted to challenge myself by using the free trial that was offered. It was fairly easy to use; however, when it came to converting the glog, it was not user-friendly in relation to files and formatting. With that being said, I could not demonstrate my Glogster’s interactive features on UWinDig. Nonetheless, this is a fantastic multimedia application to apply in my future classrooms, as it is beneficial for all types of learners. I could certainly use Glogster as a source in some of my lesson plans to enhance a certain topic with visual representations and engaging educational concepts! I think my students would enjoy experimenting with Glogster because it is very interactive, and contains diverse pertinent images/videos.

Jessica Beaulieu

I read the hybrid pedagogy article titled Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom by Ashley Hinck. Her article explores the use of template/shortcut platforms and how they place limitations on creativity and literacies in the classroom. To counter this, Hinck refers to a “Critical Digital Pedagogy” to positively impact the learning process for students. To summarize this article, I chose to make an infographic using Canva.

Almost immediately after delving into the article, I was able to make some quick connections. As a high-school student, I can remember taking a digital media course with the explicit purpose to learn how to create digital pieces using photoshop or HTML/CSS. I can remember the mixture of anxiety and eventual boredom I felt when I realized digital making involved more than following a set of instructions and conveniently plugging in my own ideas into a template. While this sounds obvious, this new approach in the classroom went against everything I had learned and continued to learn as a student. As such, the idea of template/shortcut platforms as ‘worksheets’ resonated with my own experiences as a student, as well as allowed me to reflect on my own pedagogical experiences. I find I am most comfortable learning and teaching in a lecture-based environment. My undergraduate program consisted of factual material that had one or few varying answers. I had not considered the implications of this, or how everyday use of media platforms can reinforce this traditional mindset of structured knowledge, rather than creativity. This ‘ghost of worksheet templates’ has real implications in our day to day learning, both as students and teachers.

In my practice, I would like to encourage learning as a process of trial and error, rather than what Hinck describes as linear steps that lead to success or failure. I think it’s really important for students to be confident in their work and achievements, as well as to be able to take constructive criticism and improve when necessary. Incorporating digital media may be one way to gain essential literacies to build on students knowledge and communicate through open and engaging methods. For example, students can recognize the limitations of template platforms and create new digital experiences that they can draw from. As well, it can provide an avenue for educators to gain new pedagogical knowledge and foster ‘good learning’ practices for which allow students to ‘try, fail and revise’. These can be applied even without digital context (i.e.: allowing a student to improve on a test they did poorly on).

In my experience with Canva, I wanted to try and create an infographic that didn’t rely heavily on using a template. However, I found myself repeatedly looking up Youtube videos on how to create a good infographic and which template styles would be the best to use. I decided on a template and tried to use this as an opportunity to see if the experience was limiting in any way. While I found it easy to navigate Canva and its ‘drag-and-drop‘ options, it was difficult to summarize the article using the available graphics. While I did change the font and choice of colours, there was not a heavy selection of images that were available to the free user. Furthermore, it was hard to deviate from the prescribed format. Alternatively, Canva allowed me to create a finished digital product that followed an easy set of steps.

In the end, I found myself worrying a lot if I was making an infographic correctly and experienced a bit of stress. Linking back to the article, I feel like even when given the opportunity to be creative, I worried that I was not following the correct format. I think this impacted my infographic, as well as my engagement with the tool as I was more worried about the finished product, rather than the process.

With a “Critical Digital Pedagogy” I am confident students will be better able to interact and engage with content, as well as recognizing the influence that platforms have on their learning and creative output.

After reading Ashley Hinck’s Digital Ghosts in the Classroom, I decided to try my hands at a sketchnote. Since this is my first time attempting something like this, I thought I would start with a medium I was most comfortable using: traditional pencil and paper!

One obstacle with drawing traditionally is once the mark is down on the page, it can be very difficult or nearly impossible to remove it, especially when using permanent inks and pencils. This means that a fair amount of time should be set aside to sketch out a rough copy to plan out how the space on the page can be used effectively. In my case, I made three rough copies before committing to a final version which was a bit time-consuming. Another drawback for me was creating the digital copy of my drawing. I used a large piece of paper for my final piece; a piece of paper that did not fit in my scanner! Unfortunately, all the lights in my house have a warm, yellow tinge to them which muddies the colours of the drawing when taking its photo. I tried to use some colour correction after taking the photo, but computers are just tools, not miracle workers.

Enough with my struggles, let’s talk about the process of making this sketchnote. It was my hope that the article’s title would be the focal point of the drawing. By selecting a very vibrant green for the lettering similar to what people may see on their own digital clock at home and using red (green’s complementary colour) for nearly everything else in the drawing, the intent was to have the words “Digital Ghosts” really pop out. I would like to note that I wanted the product and corporate logos to remain as close to their official colours as possible so they were spared the red touch! Finally, it is probably obvious that my sketchnote relies heavily on drawings more than words to get the points across. I wanted to focus more on the sketch part of the sketch note!

Hinck discusses a shortcoming that has appeared in her classrooms recently: a lack of enthusiasm in her students when building digital artifacts of their own. She brings up the banking model of education that she fears is still being instilled into students today; the idea that students are simply containers to be filled with answers. It was this statement that gave me the idea to draw her thoughts and ideas as little cartoons. In this illustration, someone is filling the student piggy bank with an answer key.

Hinck mentions several platforms that she believes contribute to students’ reluctance to learn digital skills from scratch. Platforms such as Instagram, Canva and Wix are some of the drag-and-drop websites that add to many students’ preconceptions of how to make anything digital. By providing pre-made templates, these websites hinder creativity since filling out a template can be much easier than designing your own format. The final piece may not come out looking exactly as planned and can lack originality due to the limitations imposed on users. I chose to focus on three of these platforms (though I drew rough sketches of a few others that did not make the cut to the final sketch including Facebook, Snapchat and GIPHY.)

The article mentions that some students feel very discouraged when they are confronted with difficulties and errors when learning how to format their own digital works without the aid of the template platforms. To drive home the idea that a mistake need not be a reason to quit, I thought of two images: a person despairing with the old fashioned head-in-the-hands pose we’ve all probably felt at some point in our lives (or possibly at some point while completing this assignment!) and a person continuing to work through their difficulties.

I made this set of images to show the limitations the template platforms place on creativity. The student in the top image is pleased that the stencil (or template) they are using will produce a butterfly (or a program/website) on the canvas, though it will be fairly basic-looking. The bottom two images has the student experiment with different hardware (Raspberry Pi), software (GIMP) and languages (HTML5) to create a much more customized and original work.

The last piece of my sketchnote I want to invesitgate in this reflection is the image of a student handing in a finished work to their teacher. Even though there is a pile of previous attempts and mistakes cluttering their desk, there is also a big smile on their face. The message I took away from Hinck’s article is that students have become afraid or ashamed to make mistakes, especially when making digital works. This may be largely due to template platforms offering easy-to-create cookie cutter works with little chance for experimentation and failure. The satisfaction of hunkering down, correcting errors and completing your work exactly how you envisioned it is lost on many students.

Perhaps if teachers focused more on the process of creating the digital work (or the process of completing schoolwork in general) rather than only acknowledging the finished work, students would be more enthusiastic and willing to try new things, experiment with new software and languages, and will be less likely to hide their progress and mistakes. This could also be accomplished if teachers showed students their own struggles with learning these new techniques.

On a side note, I took the article’s message to heart when preparing this blog post! I wanted the page to look a certain way, but the standard controls in WordPress did not include the formatting options I wanted. Luckily, this site also supports html code so I was able to move beyond the default setup of the website and customize it to look exactly how I wanted!

Hello world of Digital Technology & Social Media,

I choose to work with Ashley Hincks article “Digital Ghosts in the Classroom”. I choose to use Movavi Video Editor to create a video containing key concepts from the article.

To begin, Hincks’ article was an awesome read, I really enjoyed some of the concepts she chooses to isolate. In the article, she spoke a lot of creativity and how to incorporate that for all student. She used her digital pedagogy while portraying the concepts of templates and shortcuts which proves that students are used and familiar with step by step methods of direction. As this is being covered she hints that creativity is not being used and expressed by students as they simply follow templates and do not use other resources. Students follow templates to reassure success and that criteria are covered by what the teacher desires.

In Hincks article, she agrees that creativity is declined in schools and I can support that statement. having a teacher who was limited to digital technology for many reasons was a hindrance to my education. Not only did I not get the chance to create anything myself, but I never even got to see anybody work with technologies and spread creativity with youth in the purpose of education. Although throughout my education I have enjoyed simplistic work and getting familiar with important programs that are used in the field of work, I still would have liked to expand my creative instincts with technologies as I believe it can change someone’s decision on career choice. Personally, I am not great with technology but maybe I would have been with more exposure. Regardless, I feel for students who are technologically inclined and can excel as there are many careers in the field of technologies that do not apply to everyone and need specializations which would be achievable for them. As for a teaching standpoint, I will definitely encourage creative pathways and give opportunities for projects to be done online through digital technology applications.

Additionally, working with Movavi was a lesson in all, I challenged myself creatively and made myself a better computer person doing this. I learned key skills and expanded my technological knowledge. Movavi was limited however was easy to use and simplified a lot. The application was able to provide me with default setting and example to guide me through starting a video and from their creativity took the rest away. I enjoyed the fact that you could use many different technologies such as video and audio at the same time and in sync. This will help me bring creativity to every activity I do and allow me to effectively teach students.

Lastly, I will begin to incorporate technological ideas and creativity into the classroom. I believe it is crucial for students to have options and gain technological skills as the world is turning that way. I also realize that working hard on technological productions can be personally humbling, and can raise a major sense of pride amongst individuals. If a project can be rewarding to a student, I would rather they do it in that manner to inspire them to continue their life long education. I know that somehow my teaching will have the creativity and I will find many ways to incorporate it throughout many different pathways.

I hope you all enjoy the video/ slide-show voice over!

For this assignment I worked with Ashley Hinck’s article “Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom”. I chose to make an infographic using Canva. 

The main message the author portrayed from the article was that students only know the bare minimum when using these shortcut/ template platforms which can inhibit their creativity. When there is a lack of creativity this can lead to students taking less risks and just doing the bare minimum to follow with what the teachers’ expectations are. A lot of students want to step-by-step directions on how to succeed. These shortcut templates help with that because they are drag and drop methods and are easy to use. If students just complete what is asked of them, they’re less likely to “think out the box” to help enhance or open up their creativity side.

This led me to question teachers.  The author stated how teachers need to show students their own failures through trial and error.  Teachers are role models for students, they need to explore new technologies to present to their students to help enhance their learning. Of course, it’s easier to stay in your comfort zone and use the templates/platforms were all used to and trust, but where’s the creativity in that? Times are changing, there is frustration when using these new platforms and they may be more time consuming especially when learning how to use them, but I believe that more positives can come out of it. Students are so scared of being wrong because the education system have told us time and time again that wrong answer are not accepted. That alone tells students to play it on the safe side.  In the digital world there should be no wrong answers, students should see that failure can be a good thing and it leads to growth.

This was my first time using Canva. In my past experiences my teachers have used the more traditional platforms like PowerPoint, and that’s all I’ve ever used in my projects. I rarely had the option to show my creative side with a lot of assignments, especially when a lot of them are essays. Before I started using Canva I YouTube a tutorial, so I had an idea of what I was using.  It has multiple platforms you can use like presentations, social media (Instagram), poster, flyers, cards etc. I think it was easy to navigate and use, and everything is well organized and easily laid out. The big learning curve I had was although tutorials are great to get you started when learning new platforms, it’s really not the same until you start using the platform yourself. This platform was a little limiting when I was using it.  Since I was using the free version you’re limited to certain photos, templates, stickers etc. I found this limited your creativity a bit. It also gives you the option to start from a blank sheet or use a template.  Templates can be nice to start you off, but it’s frustrating when you’re stuck to a certain layout and can’t design anything the way you want it.

Overall, I fell in love with Canva. I’m slowly realizing that times are changing, students have a lot of behavioural issues. They need to be taught in a way that is engaging/ interesting so that you can help enhance their learning.  Since I’m going into the teaching profession these new digital platforms are something I will start adding to my practice.

While I was listening to Chris Friends interview with Amy Collier, Questioning Learning, I noticed some major themes that developed while they spoke. Right away Collier began talking about this idea of Learnification. This got me thinking about how education really does have a divide. There are those that believe we need to focus solely on the student and their learning style, and those that consider it best if each student learns the same thing. Now I had to look up what learnification meant, and it is essentially where Gert Biesta believed that if we start to change education so that we are focusing more on the student, then the teacher will soon become obsolete. Teachers become useless in a new technological age where any question we could possibly ask has a readily available answer. Amy Collier, in her interview with Chris Friend, mentions,

“What we miss is that learnification actually comes from the paradigm of kind of really individualizing education, putting it at the responsibility of the individual rather than kind of a community activity, taking away the relational context of faculty to student, that when you think about teaching has always kind of been there.”

On the other hand, you have educators that believe seeing the student and adapting the curriculum to suit them is what we really need to focus on. I think that it should not be more of one than the other. We need an equal balance of both types of logic. Within my own teaching I know that I often forget to follow the curriculum and instead focus more on what would be relevant and fun to learn. Sometimes I find myself “seeing the student” too much and not enough on what they are told to be learning. Being in Drama and English I often have more free rein on what I can teach my students, and I think that is what helps me to achieve the balance.

Education isn’t just about what the student should learn, but it’s also exactly about that.

Another major topic that they approached was the use of language in education. With a specific focus on the word “risk.” How “education is a series of risks” and we have to “embrace risk”. This was one concept that really resonated with me. Again, the balance between staying within the guidelines of what we have been afforded, while also taking risks. This is something that I find some teachers really struggle with achieving because they’re too afraid of getting it wrong, or not being liked by their students. Personally, I have been hearing the word “risk” a lot in education. I know that working with students who are “in-risk” often scares many teachers, but these are the students that I enjoy educating with the most. I enjoy working one on one with them because they are often the students that we can learn the most from. They are also the most rewarding. Working with these students in my undergrad has really made me realize that this is the type of student that I want to continue to learn from.

While I was making my artifact I tried to really capture the sides of education that Friends and Collier were discussing. I was originally going to make a video, but I was struggling with how to capture what I was thinking onto the video. I then looked at other mediums to use and landed on the infographic. This was the perfect way that I could capture what I visually imagined while listening, and how I gathered the information. I decided that the infographic would capture the essence of the podcast more, so this is the final product.