#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.

Hi everyone! For my Multi Media Assignment I chose to do a SketchNote.

To be perfectly honest I had a difficult time starting this project as I did not know which format to use. It felt almost redundant to use a “cookie cutter” media form Ashley Hinck referred to in her article, like Canva or Wix. But I also did not have a lot of faith that my artistic abilities would be able to get the job done. I finally went against my judgement and decided upon a sketch note because that seemed like the best fit for the assignment.

I started off by doing some doodling while I read the article to help map out what I was going to create later. Hinck starts by referencing media formats, so I first drew their logos. The left side of the page I dedicated to the formats that bar students from creative input. I also added quotes directly from the article that I thought would be beneficial in further getting my point across.

I used Banish the Ghosts! as the divider between the two areas of the paper. The right side of the page was when I got to use my own creativity. I actually found it very relaxing to read the article and draw what came to mind. I started off with the basics, (I took inspiration from the SpongeBob GIF when I created the “Imagination” drawing). I then tried my hand at drawing a brain which inevitably did not go over as well as I wanted to. Persevering on added the finishing touches to the right side with a think bubble as well as a science test tube. I was actually quite happy with how it ended up turning out. I have not picked up a coloured pencil probably since grade nine art class, so it was a great way to spend the evening. 

I really appreciated what Ashley Hinck had to say in her article. I think in today’s society kids are more prone to the “cookie cutter” templates because that is what is seen as the correct way of doing things. With technology ever evolving, sites like Canva, PowerPoint, and Prezi have taken over presentations. Students will not benefit from the “drag and drop” way of doing things, they need more space to extend their imagination to its fullest potential. 

Enthralled by Ashley Hinck’s article “Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom”, all about the institutional barriers set against students’ intuition and agency that only increased with our technological development, I set about writing my first multimedia reflection and blog post in reflection to that. To break up the monotony of text, I also opted to include an infographic. Lacking the hands-on artistic vision of my more creative colleagues, an infographic, when supported by the right software provider, can be easy to create and present information effectively, coupling them with just the right visuals, images, colours, and more to pass on a lesson in one of the best ways possible. I chose to work with Canva. 

Hinck focuses on the fact that the education system is ushering in a series of “template sites or services”, where student usage of technology is becoming analogous to worker bees: press this button now, mirror each other’s actions, find the same answer (essentially the “drag and drop” concept Hinck repeatedly draws attention to). While there is certainly something to be said for efficiency and streamlining, it is coming at a cost of individuality and expressive freedom, with students now feeling like they can’t or shouldn’t step beyond the set paths. 

As the students of today and tomorrow continue to be steered away from the trial and error system, we collectively seem to forget one of life’s best lessons: you learn from your mistakes. With our education systems using technology and digital software to the extent that it is, a pattern set to climb with every passing year, it’s simultaneously making erroneous moves a taboo thing. It doesn’t help that the software we use or the tech pieces everyone has access to have increasingly sophisticated tutorials, how-tos, and walkthroughs directing us on how to operate what we’re using, all to the point where it’s expected for anyone under the age of twenty to have the technical mastery of a graduated IT worker. From a generational theory perspective, these kinds of expectations have become burdening pressures: if you’re a young person, you should know how to use this stuff, and if you don’t know, then you must be some sort of social pariah. 

In the English language, there are several different words for “hello”, but there are millions of ways to greet someone with a hello. Instead of limiting the pool of correct answers on how to use and what to do with our software and technology to the one-word “heys” and “his”, we should be much more open to accepting different styles and answers, whether it be another way to phrase it, like “good morning” or “how’s it going”, or another way to do it, like the handshake or high-five.  We need to let students come up with different ways to do the same thing, and not throttle the correct answers to a predetermined answer-key. While these concepts can be applied across the teaching spectrum, it is especially important to apply it to classroom uses of technology. Everyone should be on the same page, and no one should be left behind. With choice comes creativity, and limiting the former completely snuffs out the latter.

Hello! For this Multimedia Reflection, I chose to respond to Ashley Hinck’s article, “Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom”, with the sketchnote format.

In the course of this post, I’ll talk about the article and relate it directly to the sketchnote I created, which you can see directly below:

The sketchnote shares the same title as Hinck’s article and is broken up into three main sections. First, the upper left section discusses template platforms and ends with a problem. Second, the section to the right discusses tools that provide more freedom and creativity and promote openness in creation, but also ends with a problem. Finally, the third section is near the bottom, attempting to address the remaining concerns.

The article takes a critical look at platforms and tools that assist in the creation of digital artifacts using a template or “shortcut” method of composition. Typically these kinds of tools have drag-and-drop interfaces that interact with some sort of template, and some examples provided by Hinck include Canva or Blogger. These tools are designed so that they are easy to use to create some artifact with little risk of failure. In order to provide this kind of service, these platforms provide an easy set of steps that are foolproof; all the user must do is follow the prescription and they can’t get it wrong.

The problem with these template platforms, as Hinck argues, is that because they are designed to be easy to use, they are rigid. Their specialization forces them into producing very particular kinds of artifacts and as a result can become detrimental to true creative expression. Additionally, the more a user uses template platforms, the more that template takes hold of them and shapes the kinds of creations they make, so that there becomes a danger where creative expressions are made in the image of the template.

This section of my sketchnote summarizes these points, first by giving some examples of commonly used template platforms, then leading some of the issues that come along with these platforms. The “evil”, corrupting template is represented by the red box. I tried to express the monotony of template platforms by using the number three often along with plain colours; the examples are colourful to “lure you in”.

An additional problem that comes from template platforms is that they will only take your creative endeavours so far; the tools are easily mastered and are quickly worn out. So what is it that we do?

Instead of encouraging students to use template platforms to create, Hinck suggests that educators should encourage students to try out tools that provide more flexibility, like Photoshop, Audacity, or GIMP. There are no prescribed set of “correct” steps, as a template platform may encourage; instead there are many undefined steps that aren’t always progressive. With open activities like these, sometimes a student must explore a problem from the side rather than head-on.

As a result, these kinds of tools or platforms are more difficult to use, and students are prone to fail on their first few attempts. Additionally, the use of template platforms can come to haunt the student! They shape the student’s perception of expression and create a disconnect between the expectations they bring to open platforms from template platforms and the effort required to create artifacts.

Hinck suggests that we normalize the sort of trial and error process that is necessary to master these open platforms and to reduce frustration in using them. We shouldn’t expect to nail down wonderful expressions of our creativity on our first attempt, nor even the next few tries. Even if we are frustrated in creating these artifacts, we must keep in mind that this work is the necessary cost to create a true expression that rewards and empowers us. We should work towards banishing the ghosts of templates that haunt us.

In my history as an undergraduate student in physics (and later in my Master’s), I greatly valued template platforms because assignments typically required me to use them to complete the assignments in a reasonable amount of time. A frequent example is that I had to give many presentations and I always found myself gravitated towards something like PowerPoint. Often I was in some evaluative setting that only valued the scientific content in my presentations and the way I presented myself, which I didn’t necessarily have any problems with. In these kinds of cases, I think worrying about some novel presentation of scientific ideas would actually have been detrimental, because the pedagogical value in these settings was, “Can you talk about this topic that you’ve researched?” and I often liked to present these scientific ideas as simply as I could. There was no need to re-invent the wheel, so-to-speak. Trying to become comfortable with some of these open platforms often requires many hours of work and practice, which makes it difficult to use them in practice as a novice when the assignment you need to complete is due in a week.

However, I do not mean to say that this idea of focusing on open platforms would not have been irrelevant to me. In fact, there were times where I needed to create something on Google SketchUp or GIMP for some sort of report. In my Master’s thesis, I had to create my own diagrams because I wanted to avoid issues of citation with other authors, or there was no suitable template of representation I could use. So I was forced to try my hand at working with vector graphics software like Inkscape, and when I got the hang of it, it felt good that I could create what I wanted. I think it is good to keep the criticisms of template platforms in the back of one’s mind at all times, and, when the time permits, to strive towards working with platforms that encourage openness and experimentation.

Canva by Jordan Thrasher

I read Ashley Hinck’s Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom and created an infographic using Canva, to summarize her article. The main point she is trying to get across throughout the article, is the idea that using shortcut/template websites and platforms or “cookie-cutter” platforms as I described, is killing creativity in our students. A few examples of these programs include: Facebook, Snapchat, Canva, Google Slides, etc. She believes that by allowing students to “create” by using drag and drop platforms, we are limiting their technical potential. Moreover, students are not able to build resiliency in understanding that getting stuck or trial-and-error are all part of the process of success. Once they are able to build this skill through practice and learning, the sky’s the limit. 

While I agree with the ultimate goal of getting the best out of our students, I don’t necessarily think that teaching kids how to code will prepare them for what is expected from them in post-secondary or the job force. However, it is a different story if their career aspiration is in computer science or some kind of communications or marketing position. I still think the tools provided allow students to be creative because there are so many tools available to choose from. I believe if students are providing well-thought out projects, regardless of how they do it, then we are not only limiting stress, but rewarding success as well.

Incidentally, my stance on technology in the classroom is one I approach with caution, but with open arms. I appreciate a challenge and furthering my technical knowledge, but only if I can make it beneficial for my students. This assignment I found to be a challenge creating my first infographic and I can now use that experience moving forward if I make one again.

 I chose to create an infographic using Canva to summarize the Article Digital Ghosts in the Modern Classroom by Ashley Hinck. The artcicle speaks about the lack of creativity and individuality as a result of using digital technology in the classroom. I believe technology has not eliminated the “drag and drop” model of learning it just changes the medium by which we apply this model.

 The traditional ways of learning through worksheets and simply plugging in the correct answer because it is what the teacher expects is not eliminated by the use of technology in the classroom. Many media platforms implement pre-designed templates for students to use when designing online resources. These templates are nothing new to students, they have been conditioned to follow the instructions to get the “right answer”, essentially eliminating any chance for creativity. Traditional school culture is reinforced in these “drag and drop” models of online learning.

 It is critical for students to develop a better understanding of the creative process. As educators it is important for us to take students to the next level, moving from pre-determined to original, creating rather than filling out a template. I believe it can be difficult for students to move from high school to post-secondary to the workplace, engaging on a deeper level in online platforms helps students to develop their creative identity as well as problem solving skills. Working with online resources can be frustrating, however, it is important for students to recognize the variety of ways to accomplish their goals and recognize their “failures” as an opportunity to grow and learn. 

We must move away from the idea that obstacles are equivalent to failure and that there is only one way of accomplishing a goal. This is an ongoing issue in the education system, the way we measure knowledge uses a “right or wrong” answer system with no room for creativity or opinions. I believe that we have begun to move in the right direction towards enabling students to express their creativity and to change their mindset so that they begin to break away from the drag and drop model enabling students to realize that there is more than one pathway to success.