For this blog post, I watched a video of a ninth grade English class from a high school in West Virginia. The class was comparing the Renaissance period to the contemporary era that we live in. Essentially, the teacher asked the student to make connections between the art, literature, and architecture of Shakespeare’s time period and ours. After some quick researching during the allotted class time, the students realized that without the Renaissance, we would not have some of our favorite movie and TV shows today. The teacher was able to accomplish these lesson plan objectives through the use of technology.
The teacher used multiple modes of digital technology throughout her lesson plan to get the students engaged with the Renaissance period. I suppose it is a little ironic that the students would be learning about Shakespeare on the computer, given Shakespeare definitely did not use one himself. However, in today’s modern times it is ideal to use the Internet when conducting research.
In Solomon’s and Perkins’s article, “Do Technologies make us smarter? Intellectual Amplification With, Of, and Through Technology”, the authors study the concept of distributed cognition.
Distributed cognition argues that knowledge is not simply confined within the learner, but rather it is manifested in tangible, inanimate objects such as a pencil or a piece of paper. The learner gains knowledge through the correct use of these tools.
Solomon and Perkin believe that we observe the learning’s effects through and with technology. Additionally, researchers can observe the effects of technology when someone is learning.
The effect with technology means that learning emerges “through interactions when certain intellectual functions are downloaded onto technology,” (Solomon, 2005, p. 74). Basically, this means that the learner is depending on the tools in order to learn. Hence, we are working with technology. We learn how to operate our tool correctly and this, in turn, gives the affordance of learning.
In the video, the students learned through the effects of multiple modes of digital technology. For example, as soon as class started the teacher asked her students to answer a poll question on their smartphone devices so that she could take a formative assessment of the students’ knowledge on the Renaissance period. Next, the students were asked to find research about this time period on their laptops. After compliling information, the students used this research to record a podcast. By using an app on a tablet, the students were able to record themselves reading aloud the brief answer they had just found. Each group of students were given a different question that they had to research. The students then published their podcast, which was played out loud for all of their classmates to hear.
One student said that he liked this podcast activity because he did not have to present his ideas live in front of his classmates, thus eliminating the anxiety of public speaking. You could argue that this is a type of affordance that the podcast activity gives over doing the same activity in a “low-tech” way. Without the tablets or the podcast app, the students would have to stand in front of the class and read aloud their findings. This way, using the app makes the students’ work seem more professional and polished because they are allowed to mess up and word and start over.
The students learned as an effect with technology because they were able to think with their technology to create a better understanding. The Internet gave the students a wide variety of sources to choose from; and the tablets with the podcast app produced a quality product. Now, the students can offload this new information to their classmates.
Solomon and Perkins also talked about the effects of technology on the learner. This concept, “concerns the effects, positive or negative, that persist without the technology in hand, after a period of using it,” (Solomon, 2005, p. 77). This concept seems to rely more on speculation. Or perhaps, in order to test the effects of technology on a learner, the researcher would have to remove the tool from the learner and the learner would have to adapt to a new way of doing that skill without the technology. Furthermore, Solomon compares this mode of thinking to that of an oven. Even though most people have ovens and know how to use them properly, having an oven does not teach someone about thermodynamics. However, having an oven is a useful tool if you want to effectively serve hot meals and bakery items. Cooking food properly prevents food-borne illnesses. Similarly, having the proper school supplies prevents a student from failing in class. To see the effects of technology in learning, we would first need to take away all students’ notebooks and writing utensils before telling them to complete a written assignment. To assess the students’ knowledge and resourcefulness, the student would have to rely on other tools in the classroom. Perhaps the student would be able to go outside and trace their answers with their fingers or with a stick in the playground dirt.
Because it is hard to observe the effects of technology, we cannot say for certain how the students in this video would respond. The teacher did mention that she used to do a similar class assignment without the tablets. This prevented the students from making the podcasts, and were instead asked to simply present their ideas to the class. The teacher commented that her past students were less excited about the material when they simply presented their findings, and that tablets and apps made these students more excited to participate. Instead of taking away the tools of the tablet and the podcast app, it would be more beneficial for the researcher to observe how to students learned if there was an absence of computers. How would the students gather information without the use of a laptop? Would the students be given books that held the answers? Or would they have to find this information on their own?
One affordance that the activity would lose is time. The activity would be more time consuming for the students to read through physcial books of information; and even more so if the students were required to supply their own sources of textual information. Furthermore, if we are relying on a ninth grader to find their own research source, we may also lose the affordance of credibility. Because of this, we may chose to not offload the information onto other students. For fear that this evidence is incorrect and found in an untimely manner.
Finally, I do believe that this activity–the way that the teacher has scaffolded and designed her presented lesson plan–does give the opportunity to make the students smarter. I believe that the students took advantage of the opportunity to work with tools in order to enhance their understanding of the Renaissance period. The students were able to create their thoughts through the use of the computer when they conducted research on the internet. Next, the students were able to formulate their thoughts on paper. Finally, the students created their own podcast using an app on a tablet. They read aloud their written response and published their findings in order to answer the teacher’s initial question. Because of these tools, they were given the affordance of learning more than they would have learned from books in a shorter time frame.
Miss Peffer's Blog 