If you were to take most tech classes at South you’d probably have a pretty good idea of what you’re getting into. An hour a day of hearing a lecture about the chosen topic while you do your best to care enough to take notes. However, that is not the experience you would have in a class taught by Corbin Doty. Doty teaches classes on Digital Photography and Graphic Design, which heavily implement Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop.

Most days in Doty’s class are entirely independent. If a student wants to work and wants to make their projects then they will succeed. If they don’t want to they will fail. Raeshawn Mcallister is a former student of Doty’s and believes this makes Doty more effective. “I think he’s one of the better teachers because he doesn’t really force anyone to listen… me personally if I was a teacher I’d be like y’know ‘hey do the work but if you don’t wanna do the work that’s your choice’ and I feel like that’s how Doty is and he’s just kinda a cool guy.”

Doty himself explained why a class on using technology was taught like an arts class. “So my background is as an arts educator so I try to take more of an artistic approach, but it is a career and tech ed class so I try to take a little bit of a project based approach. Usually I incorporate my photography class and my photoshop class together so you’re doing both in both classes…ou’re taking the photos and then editing them, which is kinda how I start out the class the basics of photo editing and retouching, and bring in working with text, layout, some typography kinda stuff as the class goes on.”

If you were to walk into one of Doty’s classes there’s a good chance that you’d have no idea what project the students were working on. E\ven if you looked at each of the students’ final product there’s a good chance you’d still be confused about what exactly the assignment was. Doty explained why this is. “A lot of the projects  have very simple goals… There’s a lot of different outcomes that could happen and what I’ve noticed is that a lot of students benefit from having it be a wide open thing where as long as they check a couple boxes… How they get there is open to interpretation so I like to give kids a lot of space to really expand.”

Mcallister talked about some of the benefits of being familiar with tech. “I think companies are constantly looking for ways to better or prove themselves so I think there’s always a good team of people who are technologically inclined, behind the scenes.”

At the end of the day Doty’s classes are unconventional. They’re great for artistically minded tech savvy students who enjoy being independent but may not be the right choice for those who prefer communicating and working in groups. However in a world where edited images are being made and spread by our society and tech is becoming more and more the core of America’s heart it might be beneficial to try to learn a bit more about visual software.