Mindtools

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Mindtools

• Technology as Cognitive Tools
• Learners as Designers

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The discovery of the alphabet will create
forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because
they will not use their memories they will trust
to the external written characters and not
remember of themselves. Your invention is not an
aid to memory...you give your disciples not
truth, but only the semblance of truth they will
be the hearers of many things and they will learn
nothing.
Give me some research and development money, I
will develop my great invention of writing.
People can then
Thot
Plato Pheadrus.
Thamus
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Is Writing Useful?

• Do we forget things because of writing?

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Human Minds are limited

• limited capacity of human short-term and working
  memory,
• knowledge in long-term memory may not be
  well-organized
• May not use some effective cognitive strategies

• Writing
• ?
• ?
  

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Cognitive Tools

• mental and/or technological devices which
  support, guide and extend the thinking processes
  of their users
• simplifies, rather than complicates the user's
  tasks
• aid the construction of knowledge by compensating
  for three major constraints of the human
  cognitive system
• the limited capacity of human short-term and
  working memory,
• the organisation of knowledge in long-term
  memory,
• and the learner's use of cognitive strategies.

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Task

• Think of a cognitive strategy you used in
• Reading comprehension
• Preparing for examination
• Reading a novel

• Cognitive Strategy you used
• ?
• ?
• ?

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Cognitive Tools

• Internal such as cognitive and metacognitive
  strategies
• External,
• extend the thinking processes of learners.
• engage learners in more meaningful cognitive
  processing.
• used for the construction and facilitation of
  knowledge
• can be applied to mediate learning in most
  subjects. preceding computer technology writing
  systems, systems of mathematical notation and
  systems of visual/spatial representation
• computer-based procedures and environments

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Areas of application

• direct problem solving,
• creating something, i.e. a product, idea or
  procedure,
• finding new uses for computing.

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Common Software

• word processors,
• spreadsheets,
• graphics,
• adventure games and
• simulations.

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Curriculum Areas

• enhancement of reading comprehension
• and all kinds of writing skills
• mathematics and science
• social studies
• foreign language learning
• technology subjects
• arts.

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Generic Skills Acquired

• the development of knowledge representation
  skills,
• problem solving,
• planning and management of study,
• and students' self-monitoring and evaluation.

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Instruction versus Learning
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Difference between Instruction and the use of
Cognitive Tools

• To instruct someone to learn
• perform some activities which result in your
  understanding of, and durable memory for, this
  material.
• A cognitive tool gives the learner just such a
  ready made set of activities.

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Educational Communication
Coded information

• Technology as conveyor
• Believed -- communicating content to students
  will result in learning

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Teaching/Instruction

• information or intelligence (in many different
  forms) is encoded visually or verbally
• learners perceive the messages encoded in the
  medium and sometime "interact" with the
  technology
• Interaction is normally operationalized in terms
  of student input to the technology, which
  triggers some form of answer judging and response
  from the technology in the form of some
  previously encoded (canned) message.
• Technologies as conveyors of information have
  been used for centuries to "teach" students by
  presenting prescribed information to them which
  they are obligated to "learn."

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Instructional Design Models
Assumptions

• Objectivity
• Objective Reality
• Common perception

Causality A will cause B
Technology controlled by Experts
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Drawbacks of Instructional Model

• the process of learning is holistic. It cannot be
  understood by simply analyzing human responses to
  attributes of technologies that carry the
  messages to be learned.
• In fact, it is difficult, if not impossible, to
  isolate the effects of the affordances of
  technologies.
• Our instructional design models are grounded on
  two essential components of reality--objectivity
  and causality--both integral components of
  western consciousness.
• Objective reality is predicated on a number of
  assumptions, such as commonality of perception
  which supposedly enables us to observe and
  describe the physical world and to convey those
  descriptions to others as reality.

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Computer-based Cognitive tools

• activate and perhaps model cognitive operations
• provide external resources that compensate for
  the limited capacity of human memory.
• aid thinking, problem solving and learning by
• making large amounts of information immediately
  available for the learner's use,
• making it easy to retrieve relevant, previously
  learnt information
• prompting the learner to structure, integrate and
  to interconnect new ideas with previously
  acquired ones

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• providing for self-testing, thus rehearsing the
  recall of previously learned information and thus
  increasing its retrievability
• enabling the learner to represent ideas verbally,
  pictorially and graphically
• providing for the easy movement, consolidation
  and restructuring of information needed by
  individuals as their knowledge base grows.

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Rationales for Using Technology as Cognitive Tools

• Designers as Learners ????
• Learners as Designers
• Students learn and retain the most from "mindful"
  engagement
• cognitive tools require students to think
  mindfully in order to use the application to
  represent what they know

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References

• Technology as Cognitive Tools Learners as
  Designers by David H. Jonassen http//it.coe.uga.e
  du/itforum/paper1/paper1.html
• IERG Imaginative Education Research Group
  http//www.ierg.net/ideas_cogtools.html

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END
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Knowledge Construction, Not Reproduction

• How we construct knowledge depends upon what the
  learner already knows which depends on the kinds
  of experiences that the learner has had, how the
  learner has organized those experiences into
  knowledge structures, and the learner's beliefs
  that are used to interpret objects and events
  that s/he encounters in the world.
• Cognitive tools are tools for helping learners to
  organize and represent what they know.
  Constructivists claim that we construct our own
  reality through interpreting experiences in the
  world.

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Distributing Cognitive Processing

• Cognitive technologies are tools that may be
  provided by any medium and that help learners
  transcend the limitations of their minds, such as
  memory, thinking, or problem solving limitations
  (Pea, 1985).
• Example Language, computer
• off-load some of the unproductive memorizing
  tasks to the computer, allowing the learner to
  think more productively

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Another Example
723 95 -------
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In cognitive tools, information and intelligence
is not encoded in the educational communications
which are designed to efficiently transmit that
knowledge to the learners. With cognitive tools,
the traditional design and development processes
are eliminated. Rather than using technologies by
educational communications specialists to
constrain the learners' learning processes
through prescribed communications and
interactions, the technologies are taken away
from the specialists and given to the learner to
use as media for representing and expressing what
they know. Learners function as designers using
the technology as tools for analyzing the world,
accessing information, interpreting and
organizing their personal knowledge, and
representing what they know to others.
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Cognitive tools are generalizable computer tools
that are intended to engage and facilitate
cognitive processing--hence cognitive tools
(Kommers, Jonassen, Mayes, 1992). Cognitive
tools are both mental and computational devices
that support, guide, and extend the thinking
processes of their users (Derry, 1990). They are
knowledge construction and facilitation tools
that can be applied to a variety of subject
matter domains. I argue in the forthcoming book,
Mindtools for Schools (Jonnasson, in press) that
students cannot use these tools without thinking
deeply about the content that they are learning,
and second, if they choose to use these tools to
help them learn, the tools will facilitate the
learning process.
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Use of Cognitive tools

• the traditional design and development processes
  are eliminated
• Technology given to the learner to use as media
  for representing and expressing what they know.
• Learners function as designers using the
  technology as tools for analyzing the world,
  accessing information, interpreting and
  organizing their personal knowledge, and
  representing what they know to others.

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Cognitive Tools

• generalizable computer tools that are intended to
  engage and facilitate cognitive processing-
• are both mental and computational devices that
  support, guide, and extend the thinking processes
  of their users
• knowledge construction and facilitation tools
  that can be applied to a variety of subject
  matter domains.
• students cannot use these tools without thinking
  deeply about the content that they are learning,
• and second, if they choose to use these tools to
  help them learn, the tools will facilitate the
  learning process.