Digital Ghosts in the Haunted Classroom
Students created the product that the teacher wanted and they count it as the right answer. Worksheets, templates, digital media, and multiple-choice tests are often at the heart of this kind of learning. They leave behind worksheets and templates and take up different technologies that encourage exploration, open-endedness, and experimentation. The assumptions and expectations of those worksheets and templates linger on in the classroom, affecting students’ expectations of learning and approaches to it.
Professional technologies like image editing software, HTML/CSS require students to make font, color, and size choices themselves, inviting students to retain agency and exercise control over the program. As critical digital pedagogues, we often analyze the technologies in our classroom, the structure of our lesson plans, and our relationships with our students — how the desks and tables are arranged or how our learning management system controls learning. We don’t often turn our attention to the technologies that are absent from our classrooms. Shortcut/template platforms and websites, even when absent from our classrooms, they affect student learning. Instead, we should help students move from users of shortcut/template platforms to makers, creators, and speakers in their own rights.
We might help students redefine “good learning” apart from the banking concept of education reinforced by their experiences with the web — to give students explicit permission to try and fail and revise. For example: this semester, students shared critiques of school culture with students, helping them to see the pedagogical choices clear the vision for learning where students embrace. Students look forward to joining students in reflection about our individual and collective personalities in relation to participatory to social culture.
Social culture: Students are used to seeing themselves as makers, creators and speakers. They can find their own effort and those identities. Students should know how they can claim them for themselves. Students should know about the right technologies and how they offer them these identities. They can motivate how their technologies steer them away from these identities. They might re-imagine digital media making and learning. They should fix up cultures and tradition for personal identity.
Overall, analyzing the differences between various media platforms can enhance students overall judgement and personal growth within the classroom. Utilizing a variety of resources within the classroom can assist with various types of learning and allow students to prosper in their best learning environment. Allowing students to be in control of different medias within the classroom can expand the lesson and allow them to retain information in their respective learning style. In order to assist with students finding and handling their own identity, I recommend utilizing a wide variety of resources that promote the futures next makers, creators and speakers- as they continuously strive to build their own platforms. In addition, this will allow the students to critically think of the repercussions of the influence of social culture towards their progressive learning.
