#UWinDig 2020

It was interesting trying to complete this project on Ashley Hinck’s “Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom” since it is very true that we have become accustomed to drag and drop programs that complete the work for us. I struggled trying to be creative since we are not given too much opportunity to be creative in our classes and I was basically lost for ideas. I am completely guilty of resorting to template programs for my presentations and projects because they make it so easy to get my work done. In modern day schools especially, these types of programs give students the easy way out of being creative while still having a “professional” presentation made using technology. I remember being in high school business class trying to make my own website through writing code (HTML) and my website never working. However, my teacher made the effort to go through our websites to see where we might have made a mistake. Even through his efforts, I did not feel as though I learned how to properly use HTML and end up resorting to using an easy program with a template.

As mentioned by Hinck, I also believe schools have killed creativity by encouraging students to stick to rubrics and guidelines that give them the right answers. It was very difficult for me to be creative with this project since I am not artsy (hence the stick figures and poor drawings) but I chose to do a sketch note since it was out of my element. I thought it would be interesting and could add to my own growth as a professional by challenging myself a little. It may not look like much, but I ended up going through three different drafts of my sketch note before using this one as my final draft. I was able to notice my mistakes, the main ones being space issues and a lack of visuals, but this helped me become more creative. With each new draft, I felt I was able to make my sketch a little better and more clear to audiences. I chose to do a comic strip style note because I thought it would be easy to follow and I could use text bubbles to add a little creativity over writing something out, but still be able to do my own portrayal of the article.

I can now see the good in offering students the chance to have open creativity on an assignment because it enforces skills that we are not always faced with in our classes such as critical thinking and planning. When using templates in programs such as PowerPoint, it is so easy to fix mistakes, move around the slideshow to your desire, and have it always work as soon as you press the present button. As you can see with my beautiful sketch note, it is very hard to get it perfect and the imperfections are rather noticeable (I will not point them out to you, but feel free to give me some feedback on the other things), but this is what comes with hand drawings and using pencils and markers. This is where the pass/fail aspect of Hinck’s article comes in as students are more or less afraid to make these mistakes and ending up with an imperfect project. We have become so accustomed to everything working on the first try and following the guidelines to only care about the grade we get on our work that we are no longer learning from fixing our mistakes and increasing our skills off what we got wrong. I hope that I will be able to take these experiences with me into my future classroom and start giving my students a chance to portray their own ways of being creative.