digital

Going Analog in a Digital World

Have you noticed how some filters on your Instagram snaps make your photos look “old-school” or “lo-fi” with a vintage feel? Using these filters, our photos go through a digital process of wear and tear in order to give it more uniqueness, depth and personality. In this era of bits, bytes, ones and zeros, there has been a renewed interest in going low-tech that is being seen in the fashion, publishing, music, art and technology world.

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Calm in the Digital Storm

Popular wisdom says this generation of students is digitally native, and that they have facility with digital technology that people even of my generation (I’m just on the upper edge of millenial) don’t have. Indeed, in my household we had a family computer all through my years in high school. Cell phones were still relatively novel, and the iPhone was not even a twinkle in Steve Jobs’ eye. This difference in perspective led to my over-enthusiasm for introducing digital technology in the classroom.

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In Search of the Digital Red Pen

Paper is great, and it gives a flexibility that typing doesn’t. I can leaf through a book faster than I can scan a PDF; word processing software isn’t as dynamic as the scrawls of a red pen. And I require students to mark their texts when they read to create “working texts.” Call me old-fashioned, but I have always been skeptical of jumping into the tech revolution with two feet. How was an app supposed to transform my teaching?

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