#UWinDig 2020

I read the article “Digital Ghosts In The Modern Classroom” by Ashley Hinck.

When first reading this piece, I had no idea what Hinck was referring to when she said “digital ghosts,” nor have I ever particularly thought about the topic overall, but I thought that this article was very interesting. I never realized how limiting these platforms may be and how much students and teachers rely on them on an everyday basis, but I can say that I agree with all of the ideas.

Here is the video I made reflecting Hinck’s ideas:

I think that it’s really important to consider how the tools we use are just as significant as the content we teach with them. As educators, we are responsible not just for providing students with content, but to also provide them with the tools and skills they need in order to apply their knowledge.

What I find most exciting about this assignment is the fact that we have been given the option to use our skills and creativity to develop a project that is entirely our own. I really enjoyed integrating traditional forms of art (my whiteboard and markers) and presenting it in a digital form (video) in order to present the ideas of Hinck’s article. It was challenging to prepare for the project, as I spent a lot of time creating concise points for my voiceover and I spent even more time trying to set up the lighting and camera for my video. By the time I finally propped up my tripod (after incorporating various items like a folding chair and a couch for extra support) and started creating the video, it was a lot of fun from that point on. I have a passion for art and digital media making, including video editing, so being able to complete an assignment using the interests and skills I already have was very exciting to me.

Overall, I think that I really took a lot from Hinck’s article and feel that I will definitely apply this knowledge to my education and future career as a teacher. I look forward to using this knowledge and these tools to bring more agency and creativity to the students in my classroom and to encourage them to enjoy every part of the creative process.

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.

A reflective essay on the article Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom by Ashley Hinck

How can students adapt to learning and platforms that do not allow the student to have full control of the media that they are creating? Can classrooms become a part of the new digital landscape and allow students to break from traditional shortcut/template creation tools?

While many teachers may try to encourage students to be more creative and try new approaches, there may be an ingrained assumption that there is only one way of arriving at a solution and that any mistakes are a sign that they are not on the right path.

In the end there may not be a perfect solution to finding a balance between creating media efficiently and effectively using template/shortcut applications and but we as teachers can guide and encourage creativity by reflecting on our own mistakes and sharing how we progressed to a final media solution. Also, by comparing theses static and template-driven tools to more creative avenues to create their own work.

Honestly, I don’t think that I’m particularly computer illiterate. I’m pretty confident in my ability to understand how something works and I’ve worked programming jobs before. But creating a multimodal platform is a first for me, so here’s hoping it at least entertains. (But really, why can I only embed two tweets at a time? With an odd number of tweets, I’m doubling up on tweets so I have to make an extra tweet if I don’t want to double up. This should be more streamlined.)

The Questioning Learning podcast had a number of topics that I needed to cut out of my twitter essay – it was just too dense for me to go into it with any real depth. For instance, there was a section in which Collier and Friend discussed the Rhetoric of Opportunity in contrast with a Rhetoric of Brokenness. The topic is fascinating, especially as the concept of Deficit Thinking came up, which was recently discussed in another course, the Global Issues course, last week. Since I had done some reading on it due to this course, I had thought that I had a decent background to talk about the topic, but found that my thoughts were too complex and wordy for Twitter. C’est la vie, or however you say it.

Instead, I chose to summarize with my own thoughts dispersed throughout. I think I managed to get to most of the important things that were discussed, though perhaps some of my image choices were a bit too tongue-in-cheek. But hey, it’s Twitter. There’s no way you go through an essay on Twitter without a few memes right?

By the way, as a bit of post-script, I’d also like to mention that standardization, while being so heavily opposed in a number of pedagogical styles and philosophies, especially in Critical Digital Pedagogy, does have its place in education. You really can’t do away with it. People want to know if the person they hire/accept will function if they let that person in. Standardization reduces the risk of failure, as evaluations will at least show that someone knows a certain bare minimum. So, there is value in it, particularly in a society that has to deal with issues of supply and demand in education and job applications. These institutions need ways to tell who they should be accepting into their programs.

There’s more too, but you know, if this wall of text continues, people will start looking for a TL;DR, and I ain’t doing one of those.

The importance of digital literacies, explained here: http://hybridpedagogy.org/digital-ghosts-modern-classroom/

It is important to understand the difference between digital literacies and digital skills. Since the rise of technology isn’t going anywhere but up, it is vital to keep up to date as a teacher with the newest tech platforms in order to know how to keep yourself safe. It is something that teachers have to know in order to educate their students on, as this article promptly explains; giving students the information about their rights and responsibilities online in regards to everyones safety.

Hi everyone! I decided to create a video including some images and main ideas taken from the article “Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom” by Ashley Hinck. I found this project to be a very fun learning experience as I had never made a video like this before. I used imovie to put my videos together as well as to add voiceovers.

My thoughts

I agree with Hinck’s arguments about the overuse of certain digital tools in the classroom and its negative effect on students creativity and their expectations of digital technology. I believe as educators we should introduce our students to websites and digital tools that will allow them to make mistakes, experiment, and have more creative freedom. This is especially important today because digital technology holds such a strong connection with our daily lives, and time spent in the classroom.

I chose to read Ashley Hinck’s Article Digital Ghosts In The Modern Classroom, which discusses the barriers in today’s teaching system throughout digital making. Students enter digital courses expecting to create great artifacts through the use of technological tools though, what most students are used to are shortcut templates that are preset by most technological programs. These linear focuses are nothing new to the classroom as the same protocol exists with the standardized worksheet and multiple choice testings, the same creativity limiting aspect passed down year after year. Hinck goes on to point out that the use of these tools (e.g. Fix, Google Slides, Canva, etc.) affects students learning as it suppresses the students ability to MAKE and reinforces the assumptions of restricted learning outcomes, causing a fear in students to step out of those guidelines to create something new. Digital culture has experienced a withdrawal of trial and error for the reassuring device of a guaranteed working product with little to no risk of failure. Students have this routine approach embedded in their minds since Pre-K, the constant step by step rubrics, and the instinct to create a product the teacher wants and deemed as the right answer.

I used the tool of a sketch note to visual map out the key ideas and themes found throughout Hinck’s article. By doing so, I am able to control the approach of my learning completely, choosing the symbols, words, colours, fonts, etc. Broken down to 3 portions, I first represent the “drag and drop” excerpt and relate the use of the shortcut templates that eliminate the need for technological knowledge to the tired notion of worksheets and multiple choice technologies (which, let’s be real, none of us learned from and just memorized the information needed for the time being and forgot all about it the next day). Throughout most of my educational pathway, I relied on these preset applications to create what I believed to be an artistically organized guaranty for a good grade, and the best part? I had to do the bare minimum work because hey, it was all already set up for me and I just needed to input the information, how amazing! Though, seeing it as an amazing concept then, I can surely agree that my desire of creativity has shot down to an all time low since, as I am not used to creating ideas from scratch and putting in the creative effort. The lack of that experimentation has made me feel fearful in assignments such as this one since my mind is so used to having strict steps to follow and ensure the teacher’s expectations. Continuing to push out of that mindset will set a great record of creative flow.

Next, we have what Hinck encourages educators to do with their students. Supporting students to become makers, creators, and speakers, instead of shortcut platform users. Creating the urge to experiment and build original ideas from scratch is what we want students to be comfortable and confident with (just look how happy little stick figure man is now!). Promoting trial and error, mistakes are OKAY and needed!

Open tools allow creative choices and build a stronger learning environment for students, it’s time to help our students claim themselves as creatives and have the ability to practice doing so in a safe space. Integrating such open tools into the classroom will create a future of confident creatives and the sooner we let go of the digital ghosts, the sooner we build a new system of success.