Distributed Cognition

Does technology make us smarter is far too broad a statement, within that question we need to define what smarter is and what technology we are using to bring us to some “smarter” place. The idea of a device or technology making us somehow smarter goes against my personal concept of what makes a smarter human however within  the readings of Salomon and Perkins, and Morgan et al., and Martin we begin to see through their research that yes it might just be possible for us to say technology makes us more efficient in our processing and manipulation of information so that deeper learning may occur. It does not, I believe increase or augment our mental abilities to become measurably ‘smarter’. Even as we are examining Salomon and Perkins idea of ‘effects through technology’ when our performance has been fundamentally reorganized can that be said to have made us smarter? We have used technology to reshape, reorganize and change our knowledge but that I believe is as close to making us smarter as technology gets us. As a result, we now know, something differently, something we did not know before, but I still am not sure that is just change or has actual learning been accomplished?    

Morgan et al. brings to the discussion of distributed cognition the idea of the “Copy and Paste” function to promote appropriate learning outcomes. The meaningful processing of content for understanding. That I believe is learning yet this particular research experiment I find more difficult to work into my understanding of how technology functions to support learning and how a redesign of the function itself ”to embed an effective interaction strategy…into the interface”, makes us smarter or again just more efficient. This idea, I believe, is similar to Salomon and Perkins concept of “effects with technology” whereby learning is amplified while a tool is being used, our effects are amplified while we use the technology to assist in the ‘copy’ function. Morgan et al. and their ideas about embedding within the interface an effective interaction strategy; the ‘paste’ function is similar in concept to Salomon and Perkins ideas of “effects through technology” where performance is not just enhanced but essentially reorganized to create a new learning paradigm.  

In Martin’s work it is proposed that the translation of information through the reliance on the connections of and between systems to communicate can be thought of as pedagogical functions. Will this translation through technological means make us smarter? I think possibly it may but that is dependent upon the quality of the technological translation and the human actors involved.  It has been my personal experience as a City Planner in local government where every day I, and others who shared my workspace, had to translate information for a variety of individuals who almost never possessed an understanding of the base information. The experience allowed me the opportunity to perfect my translational abilities and observe others I worked with who never adapted their approach or technology to aid in the translation. I relied heavily on visual systems, drawing, text or pictures. I usually began with simple sketches done with pen and paper, moving on to the use of scaled drawings or aerial photographs and finally the individual usually left me with printed information they could later process on their own. These were technologies that I used in a distributive cognitive fashion, that is using technology to augment and change the nature of how different people needed to learn. And this process would take on wholly different dimensions should I be answering questions over the phone, the most difficult representational system for this process. There were also many times I had to present this information to individuals, for who, English was not their primary language, bringing together a sort of shorthand visual communication to help them understand rather complicated municipal law.

During the duration of this entire class I have been reflecting on the variety of learning and teaching experiences I have encountered and the variety of technologies used that have modified the learning that has or has not taken place and specifically how learning for me has changed this school year as I have become more adept with the affordances of the technology I use to produce work. I have been contemplating the differences in school, public, work and individual experiences and how each of those experiences fit into Martin’s conception of connection, translation, off-loading and monitoring. I liked the idea presented by Kirsh within the Martin piece about cognitive congeniality, the way I understand it is, that no amount of translation, no matter how many ways I transform the information, learning will always be difficult if the representational systems being used are not translating the knowledge in a manner that is accepted in a cognitively congenial manner. Often in my experience working to literally translate a specialized information and literature to an authentic user I had to present the information in many forms, and I often had to ‘step back’ and evaluate the technique to see if understanding was occurring. Out of that experience I learned almost intuitively that the more I imparted the information to others the more I learned the information, something Chin et al. used in the formation of the idea of Teachable Agents in that people learn well from teaching and connecting that teaching to others using nodes and links. This idea was also present in the wetlands video as one grade was responsible for teaching the next what they had learned. I would understand the concept as the ‘teacher’ is now the ‘technology’, the teacher is the plus and learning is occurring “through” that individual.

I have also been reflecting on the nature of learning in highly structured settings under high levels of stress. I have been contemplating how learning occurred in the highly stressful world of the military where the learning had to be mastered. How was the ‘connection’ that Martin proposes actually embedded within me, how was the information that was translated absorbed in ways that defied his concept of congeniality and at what point was the information accessible to me to a degree where off-loading began and monitoring could then be applied? I still remember 40 years later how to stand at attention and how to perform an about face, and I bet it wouldn’t take long for me to remaster the ability to take apart an M-16 is this an effect through technology?. I bring these divergent ideas into the discussion to show the opposing forces on how learning takes place in real world adult interactions and how they may be applied to classroom cognition. As Martin says interoperability between systems often requires careful specification of data formatting and/or extensive translation. Within the classroom I need to understand how these systems are interpreted between and among users and what that means for learning and how those systems assist in distributing cognition across them.

Coordination is an idea developed in Martin’s work, I see it as the umbrella for the other factors he develops that are initiated as a result of the coordination between systems such as translation, off-loading and monitoring, but again do these things make us smarter? Translation moves the information into a format that is cognitively compatible with the learner, so we may understand more because the concepts are compatible with our learning patterns. Off-loading is the ability to allow the connections functional independence separate from the learner, this I believe is closer to the idea that we can be made smarter through technological affordances. For Salomon and Perkins they refer to this concept as the ‘effects of technology’ meaning the coordination remains even if the technology is removed. Off-loading increases the ‘efficiency of some parts of the system’ by modifying either the person or the cognitive system leading to individual change and to a place I believe learning can occur. This idea I believe is the key to distributive cognition, being a person plus and utilizing that plus capacity to off-load some of the more tedious or difficult learning processes to increase the likelihood for learning to occur.

Monitoring through or with technology identifies the quality of coordination between systems and provides the information as essential feedback. Monitoring identifies information gaps or as mis-matches as Martin refers to them. I believe this is an important pedagogical function missing from Salomon and Perkins ideas: of, with and through technology. Although I don’t believe any of this makes us smarter it only changes the ‘how’ we learn, yet some would argue that the ‘how’ is indeed making us smarter.

I like the idea Martin discusses regarding the clever lesson design choices that can be made when an understanding of what technology does and does not do for and within a unique pedagogical approach. He says “designers can carefully orchestrate the distribution of pedagogical “responsibility” across multiple actors in the system” including the teacher and what the teacher brings into the discussion relative to their own knowledge of the systems and to be cognizant of the position of technology within learning.

So, to the question, ‘Does technology make us smarter?’, I would answer unequivocally maybe. In some ways the technology gives us through its affordances an ability to be more effective learners and in some instances those affordances may fundamentally change the way we think and that may be said to make us relatively smarter than we were prior to the technological intervention, but ‘smarter’? The educationalists would say yes but the philosopher in me says “at what cost” do these technological enhancements make us smarter?