#UWinDig 2020

The article Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom by Ashley Hinck provokes many thoughts about some of the issues in our education systems. One of the main problems brought up in the article is that schools are killing our creativity by encouraging the use of “drag and drop” rather than making unique decisions. We need to encourage making mistakes rather than everything needing to be done without errors because learning from our flaws is the best way to learn.

The article critiques teacher’s use of template sites in web designing and other digital technologies as opposed to coding your own site. I agree with everything that Hinck discussed because individuality and creativity is something that is very underappreciated, and we should be able to choose what we want to make and not what someone has already made for us. Taking the easy way out is not the best solution to most problems in life.

I decided to create a sketchnote because I’ve never done one before and I like the idea of being able to write down simplified thoughts and leaving it completely open to my interpretation of the content in the article. When making my sketchnote, I decided that the main message I wanted to get across was that it’s okay to make mistakes. Making mistakes and learning from them is something that should be encouraged and not shut down.

Other pieces of the article that I thought should be emphasized were the concepts of imagination and creativity. I also put the quote “try and fail but don’t fail to try” on the page because it is an important concept to understand that you cannot fail unless you don’t try. More students and teachers need to have that mentality instead of automatically assuming someone isn’t intelligent just because they get a test question wrong.

Our education system supports the idea of right and wrong, but I personally believe in a less explicit approach. As well as the mandatory cut and dry assessments that will be required of me as a teacher, I plan on having more unique evaluation opportunities to give all types of students a chance to succeed in my class. Everyone learns in a different way so I will be sure to get to know all my students and their learning styles so I can be the best teacher possible. I’ve had some amazing teachers growing up that always encouraged me to make my own decisions and I’ve had some awful teachers that make you feel stupid for not being perfect. I hope to be the type of teacher that will be remembered in a positive way and really help students reach their full potential.

After reading the article Ghosts in the Modern Classroom by Ashley Hinck, I decided to create an infographic summarizing the article. This article discusses students creating digital media.

Students have the assumption that creating content has a set of linear steps to follow with right or wrong answers. I chose to discuss the article Ghosts in the Modern Classroom because the title caught my attention, then while reading I realized how relatable it is to my own digital experience as a student and a supply teacher. I decided to do an infographic for this project because they are visual and include simple text making them easy to follow, read and understand as a consumer. 

In her article, Hinck suggests that students take digital media classes with the assumption that creating content is a linear cut and paste process. Templates and short cut platforms makes creating digital media easy and requires minimal prior technological knowledge. Programs such as Canva, GIPHY, WIX and Google Slides are drag-and-drop apps used for digital learning that give students a small range of predetermined answers with limited open spaces for creativity, exploration and unexpected failures. This means students are always guaranteed a working end product and the process has already been completed in the templates.

I appreciated Hinck’s points about the effects of the ghosts on students, where she explains how there is a disconnect about what digital media making in schools should be. Actually creating new digital media requires rigorous process of trial and error along with their own creativity. Without students understanding this process, it can be frustrating when there is no linear format to follow, leaving students disconnected. In the centre of my infographic I decided to add the definition of disconnected (as well as an icon) to further illustrate this point.  

When thinking about the process of creating digital media, I reflect on my own experience as a student. When given an open-ended creative assignment, it is easy to feel overwhelmed and not know what to do next without a layout to follow. I believe it is important for students to attempt these tasks on their own with limited direction to continue to further their own creativity. The creative process requires practice and the ability to learn from failure. As a teacher I will provide creative opportunities for students and encourage them to discover their own version of a correct answer.

I read the article Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom by Ashley Hinck. First and foremost, I disagree with Hinck’s claim that template platforms “reflect traditional school culture”. There is a benefit to efficiency in technology, as it appeals to those who don’t wish to pursue mastery of complex digital techniques (such as myself). A template website like Canva saves time for the user. Rather than offering sites like these as the only option for students, it should be offered as one of many. Students like myself desire a more systematic approach to feel comfortable. The reason I chose Canva for my infographic (below) was because I found my other options too open-ended and immediately jumped to a medium that I am familiar with.

Open-endedness in of itself can intimidate those who don’t know what to do with vague expectations and all of this power to themselves. The question arises as to whether students explore best with a blank canvas or a guided hand. It would disservice those who crafted these sites to call it an intentional choice to parallel the ghosts of worksheets, as they are meant to help the less technologically-inclined. It is innovative rather than restrictive. 

It should not be assumed that everyone wants or needs complex creation methods such as  HTML to make something that the user is satisfied with or proud of. The majority of students coming out of high school do not desire to learn programming languages, and those that do often find ways to teach themselves and work on their own personal projects without instruction from a teacher. Opportunity does not necessarily equate to an increased demand for complexity, even if it promises a more modifiable outcome.

I do agree that schools promote a linear method of thinking that often gravitates students toward a single correct answer. I myself often stress over assignments that have an unclear final solution due to this thinking ingrained in me from high school. It makes assignments in English especially difficult to be happy with due to the open-endedness and wild variation between each student’s final product. I do not, however, believe that we should veer students away from programs that only intend to help find a solution and keep them content in the creative process. There should be a choice for the less creatively-inclined.

While I have done my best to get out of the linear thinking of aiming for one answer, I think that utilizing a resource to narrow down one’s options is helpful to students like me that draw complete blanks if instructions are too generalized. It is my theory that if one wishes to pursue a more creative outcome, they will make the effort to seek out a more advanced method of doing so. Those who do not share this desire may not know what to do with a more complicated approach.

I read the article “Digital Ghosts in the Classroom” by Ashley Hinck, and composed a twitter essay in response to it. She says with how fast technological education moves, tools that were used not long ago already seem like ghost-like relics.

She also talks largely about how templates and shortcuts take away agency from students, by limiting their creative options. I understand her point, but feel templates are not entirely at fault, as they can either be inspiration for something else or be deleted from the get go. Rather, I think it is up to the teachers to make every creative option available to the students, and to treat them with the respect that transforms their class time from boring to productive and fulfilling.

The twitter essay was a totally new experience for me, as my tweeting history was very minimal. I had to learn to segment my thoughts into smaller bits. The biggest challenge was editing my tweets to fit the 280-character limit. I learnt my language had to be very concise, with every word choice being very precise; essentially, I had to learn how to get my thoughts across in as few points as possible. 

After completing my twitter essay, I see the appeal of the medium in how it gets points across with directness and clarity. It adds an attractive flair to both teaching and presentation spaces, and the limitations teach students how to be succinct editors. Using a medium many students use also helped me relate to their world, which reinforces Hinck’s notions of listening to the students. In education, technology should not be a barrier between individuals; rather, it should be what connects and inspires new generations, and students should have their agency to apply all their creative and individualistic energy to their projects.  

I read “Digital Ghosts” in the Modern Classroom written by Ashley Hink.

As an avid user of Canva, I was skeptical prior to reading this piece. I was ready to be critical of her arguments and defend the website. However, Hink was not attacking my precious, free, online, user friendly software Canva; she was speaking to a much larger problem that exists in the school system.

Similar to myself, many students struggle with more advanced web developing software because they never have had to make something from nothing. Furthermore, when we are encouraged to do so, and “fail” we never pick the mechanism back up because we think we are no good at it – which is not entirely false. We are no good at it, but this is because it requires a skill we have never been encouraged to exercise before. We live in a climate where finding easier ways to do difficult tasks is praised.

With how I have chosen to conclude my Sketchnote, it feels necessary to comment on what it means to use the materials that I did to complete it. The use of markers and pencil crayons speaks to a sense of amateurism. This term has a negative connotation; however, I do not mean it as such. I am using the term in a context of accessibility both in the making of the product, and the receiving of the information of the article. “Digital Ghosts” focuses on independent thinking digitally. However, for my given knowledge, skills, and resources, a hand drawn Sketchnote was the best medium to communicate the information.

The ability to achieve something aesthetic without any specific skill or talent is desirable and many artists have based their practise around this concept. However, in order to achieve this success students must understand what it means to be using these mediums and how they are limiting. Once this is achieved they will be able to critically participate and act as solitary beings in digital creation, giving themselves agency in their work.

I read the article Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom by Ashley Hinck. I chose to summarize this text in the form of a Twitter essay, as I have been an active member of the Twitter community throughout my youth. Ashley Hinck attempts to define the term ‘Critical Digital Pedagogy’ in this article, and makes mention that students lack true understanding of digital media making. This is due, in part, to commonly used template/shortcut platforms, which Hinck refers to as ‘Digital Ghosts’.

I found it particularly interesting to read that the reason Hinck refers to such platforms as ghosts is because even after the discarding of such technologies within classrooms, student learning is still affected by their existence.

As a student, there was always the typical ‘format’ for assignments: size 12 font, Times New Roman, double spaced, etc. There were a limited number of times in my education when a teacher gave us students the freedom to complete an assignment in any which way we preferred. Even when given the chance to choose between various platform options, there were always limitations. As students, we were always working within a narrow tunnel to produce an artifact our teachers deemed acceptable. Little authority does a pre-determined template application provide.

Can we even blame students for thinking easier is better and that by following a series of steps, they will be successful? Not really. As Ashley Hinck argues, student assumptions regarding digital media making exist because the ideas reflect what students have been taught throughout education: that only one right answer exist. This is something that I have personally come across in my experience of tutoring students, particularly in Math. There are multiple ways of achieving an answer to a math problem, much like how there are many forms of digital media making. Yet, students are taught by their teachers that there is only one way to achieve such an answer. This reflects a portion of the message that I believe Hinck is trying to stress; Shortcut/template platforms promote the idea that there is only one way to produce an artifact. And that, is just simply wrong.

Overall, Ashley Hinck’s article challenges teacher candidates, like myself, to recognize these digital ghosts and realize how they affect student learning. As educators, we should be encouraging our students to be creative in their own unique way! In order to do so, we must become GHOSTBUSTERS *shouts lyric*!

You can read my whole Twitter essay regarding this article here.

I read the article “Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom” by Ashley Hinck, and I created a Twitter essay in response. And no, Hinck does not talk about the kind of ghosts Scooby Doo is afraid of. These ghosts are the ghosts of worksheets and tests in school where there is only one right answer, and the student’s main goal is to come up with whatever answer will please the teacher.

Essentially, Hinck argues that drag and drop templates are the same as mass-produced worksheets in school that leave no room for multiple answers. We have to break away from these template/shortcut platforms and encourage our students to make new creative content from scratch. 

Tools like Canva templates, Snapchat filters, and Facebook’s posting system give the illusion of creativity, but students are really only inserting information without creating anything new. Teaching students how to use tools like Scratch, HTML and CSS allows for more than just an illusion; it is a concrete way for students to create content on their own, without the work already being done for them.

Hinck argues for a total reinvention of how we think about the learning process. Students are too used to doing what they think will make the teacher happy. This ensures they get a good mark, but they aren’t actually learning. Instead, we have to see learning as a trial and error process. We have to stop fearing mistakes and failure, because failure shows us that something is fixable.

Hinck discusses the limitations of pre-made digital templates, and I had an interesting experience working within the limitations of Twitter. I haven’t used Twitter since high school, and I forgot how much editing it can take to get your tweet to fit the character limit. This was especially difficult for this assignment, where I had to figure out the best way to divide the text I wanted to include into separate tweets. 

Although the character limit was frustrating, it really allowed me to see the affordances of Twitter as a platform for creating digital content. The thread function made it easy to keep all of my content contained, and the site itself is fairly user friendly. It did not take long for me to figure out the reply functions and learn how to add gifs to my tweets. Twitter is a good tool to use to create content if you do not have a lot of technological experience. It is definitely a tool that I can, and most likely will, utilize with my own students.

After creating a Twitter essay, I can see firsthand what Hinck is talking about. I had the luxury of pre-made gifs and a clear word limit. So I had creative licence, but it was within limits. I don’t think we should discount template/shortcut platforms completely, because we can accomplish a lot within their restrictions, but there should be a push for new creative content that does not place limitations on a student’s ideas.

After reading the article “Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom” by Ashley Hinck, I decided to create a sketch-note.

In her article, Hincks discusses the influence that digital shortcuts/templates have on how students perceive digital media, and how these shortcuts basically take away creativity. She discusses how when students are given assignments that involve using digital media, they assume that these projects are a simple, series of steps that are clearly defined, and just need to be followed. Students also believe that due to the steps being laid out, digital media projects are prone to failure.

I agree with everything Hincks talk about. When I think back to my experiences as a student, every time I was given an assignment involving digital media, I was excited . I always resorted to using powerpoint, which was super quick and easy to use. The provided templates don’t require any thought of colour choice, and make life that much easier. Everything I needed was basically at the click of a button!

Now that I am able to view this situation from a teacher candidate perspective, I can point out how restricting tools like PowerPoint can be. Although students may appreciate how quick and easy these programs can be, they are not requiring students to exercise their creative mind within the classroom. Hincks also talks about how even when these “templates”, or “shortcuts” are not being used in the classroom, the expectations that they have still linger throughout the classroom, influencing decisions that students are making. As current educators as well as future educators, we need to be empowering, and encouraging creativity, thinking, and letting students know that they do have options they are able to choose from. All of the expectations that these shortcuts and templates have made make students feel that failure is not ok. We need to let students know that FAILURE IS A GOOD THING. It is a natural process, and sometimes it even helps unravel a path that we have yet to travelled down.

After reading this article, I put all of the main concepts into a sketch note. This is the first time I have ever made a sketch note. Now, I am not the most creative person, but I love doodling, and colouring. I did face some challenges on deciding on how I was doing to incorporate drawings into some of the main concepts. It really had to think abstractly. In the end, I’m extremely happy with the way it turned out. I will definitely be incorporating sketch notes into my future classrooms!

Thank you all for reading! I hope you enjoyed my sketch-note!

I read the article “Digital Ghosts in The Modern Classroom” by Ashley Hinck in which she works to define Critical Digital Pedagogy and the effects of the digital ghosts in classrooms. I  have created a Twitter Essay/Rant in response to what she writes. She considers questions around authority, roles, and agency to explain how we, as teachers, can truly make a difference in the classroom. Overall, I think Hinck makes a sound argument, but she also makes a point that, in my opinion, is flawed, so I will touch on that. 

Students assume that digital media making simply involves drag-and-drop, standardized steps, and a guaranteed outcome; by creating my twitter essay, I learned that that is NOT the case. I never thought that picking GIFs to go along with my tweets would be so difficult.  I see so many GIFs online and think about how well I relate to them, but when I need to find a specific GIF, it is like a good one does not exist. I also never thought writing a tweet to get a message across while staying within the character limit would be so difficult.  Through this assignment, I learned that Hinck is right. Students assumptions match their understanding of digital technologies. I also learned that Twitter is a great networking took when I noticed that Hinck liked and retweeted some of my tweets. Because I have never used Twitter before, I did not have a deep understanding of the tools within it and how I could use them to make my point. Through trial and error, mistakes, and many failures, I finally made it work. 

However, I do not feel that we have to completely move away from templates to be creative; this is the part of Hinck’s argument that I do not agree with. I believe that, quite often, creativity evolves from some sort of inspiration. Templates give students a foundation to work from. As students move up to new grade levels, school becomes more demanding, and time becomes more limited. By completely avoiding templates, we are teaching students to be creative, but we are also disabling them from utilizing their resources. As a pre-service teacher, I have learned the value of working with resources, so I believe that we should teach our student to do the same, if they wish, with a creative twist. From my experience, even if I use a template, I still need technological knowledge to successfully edit or make something out of said template. As a teacher, I would still give students the option to use templates if that could potentially ease any stress or anxiety for them…as long as they make it there own, that is.

The important thing here is that, despite the medium that students chose to work with, they make it their own with their ideas, as opposed to the teacher’s. We must teach them to see mistakes as a valuable tool to learn, to expect the unexpected, and to create what they envision, regardless of what the outcome may be. My perspective is that, though we should evolve from multiple choice, handouts, and, to a certain extent, templates, these things don’t entirely disable openness and experimentation. It all depends on how the students learn and what will better help them in the process. As a final thought, as Hinck suggests, we should use our authority as teachers to enable our students to claim their own agency as makers, creators, and speakers. The people who hold the biggest responsibility in helping students redefine “good learning” are teachers, so let’s do our part and  shape the path to success.