Information Technology: Tool and Teacher of the Mind

For the first time, a genuinely "think­ ing" interacting technology, the com­ puter, has become readily available to education. This special issue of the Edu­ cational Researcher addresses the prom­ ise of information technology, specifically computers, for extending and shaping the mind. The papers build on three attributes of the technology: information, symbol systems, and user activities. This preface defines and describes these attributes, highlights why they are important, and points out how they form a common thread through the four papers. Information technologies can be charac­ terized by three fundamental attributes: information, the symbol systems in which the information is cast (e.g., language, numbers, pictures), and the activities that the technologies afford or require. The common ruler, for example, is designed for measuring, and when applied yields particular information coded in a numerical symbol system. Another at­ tribute, memory, which has been absent from all preceding technologies, sets it apart as a technology capable of "learned interaction" with users. Unlike other technologies, the computer is neiţher limited to particular kinds of in­ formation or symbol systems nor to a restricted set of activities. All known sym­ bolic forms can, or will in the forseeable future, be available to the computer, enabling learners to shift from one mode of representation to another at will. Computer-afforded activities likewise can range from selecting an answer to a multiple-choice test item to musical com­ position, from programming to expert ad­ vice for repairing aircraft equipment, and from writing essays to designing auto­ mobiles. The pedagagical promise of the new in­ formation technology is boundless if we can master the technology. This promise lies partly in mapping the three attributes of the technology—information, symbol systems, and activities—onto their men­ tal correlates: knowledge structures, in­ ternal modes of symbolic representation, and cognitive operations, respectively. In­ formation presented in alternative sym­ bol systems, with the learner controlling the translation among symbol systems, may provide more complete knowledge than if only one symbol system had been used. Moreover, the process of translation among_symbol systems may provide the learner with the capability to take new in­ formation presented in one symbol system and translate it to another, with one sym­ bol system being more conducive than an­ other to the learner's preferred mode of processing, or to solving a complex prob­ lem. For example, different symbol systems can represent more or less the same in­ formation, but each introduces its own bias because each encodes the information in unique ways. For example, a graphical representation of a parabola provides somewhat different information than does its algebraic form. The power of repre­ senting information in more than one symbolsystern_lies in the ability to: (a) provide a more complete picture of a phenomenon than any single symbol system can; (b) in­ crease the chances of linking new informatioņ to the learner's preferred mode of learning (i.e., to the learner's preferred symbolic representation); and (c) cultivate cognitive skills in translating or shifting among symbolic representations. Our ex­ pectation is that this symbolic flexibility will increase the learner's knowledge and understanding. In "Thought Provoking Software: Juxtaposing Symbol Systems," Pat Dickson develops this line of argument more extensively. User activities also are expected to en­ hance knowledge acquisition, understand­ ing, and transfer. Activities such as pro. gramming, responding to a drill exercise, manipulating a variable in a simulation, or composing with a word processor afford learners potential choice points. Informa­ tion used to make these choices tends to be remembered, and hence becomes part of the learner's knowledge base. Accord­ ing to David Olson in "Computers as Tools of the Intellect," computers, by consistent feedback on choices, will make children's knowledge more explicit and teach them to distinguish "what is represented in the language and what is added by the reader or listener. " In "Computer Literacy and Book Literacy," Bob Calfee makes a similar argument: Computers, like book literacy, may lead to "an explicit understanding of the use of written and spoken language as a tool for problem solving and communication. " Activities afforded by the computer also affect how the learner's knowledge base is manipulated. Computer programming, for example, is heralded for the mental skills it is expected to cultivate in learners, no for the specific knowledge the learner acquires about the programming lan­ guage. The assumption is that the ac­ tivities involved in computer program­ ming—planning, creaţing_specific routines for handling redundant activities such as looping testing specific routines—become generalizable skills. All four authors make this point about one or another form of computer activity. It is the central focus of Marcia Linn's paper, "The Cognitive Consequences of Programming Instruc­ tion in Classrooms. " The studies Linn briefly summarizes suggest that program­ ming can cultivate mental skills under spe­ cific instructional conditions, although ad­ mittedly this effeçt; is. as yet small and elusive. The mapping of computer attributesinformation, symbol systems, and activi­ ties—onto their cognitive counterpartsknowledge, symbolic mode of representa­ tion, and cognitive skills—can be of two distinct kinds, as David Perkins points out in a forthcoming article. One is a relatively superficial mapping. The computer makes it possible to achieve greater convenience or efficiency and reduce mental effort, as is typical when we move from the use of Scotch Tape and scissors to electronic cut­ ting and pasting. The second kind of map­ ping is far more profound; the use of a word processor has a lasting effecţ on the way essays are planned, composed, and revised. Although computers afford a vast pan­ oply of instructional activities, a caveat is in order. The impact of the new tech­ nology on cognition is not guaranted. Its impact depends largely on how students and teachers use the new technology. Whether the technology's effects on cog­ nition are profound depends on learners' motivations, expectations, attributions, self-perceptions, and the like which, in turn, affect the extent to which computers are "mindfully" or "mindlessly" engaged. Trial and error activities of children ob­ served while programming in Logo, for example, are symptomatic of a "mindless" mental set. With this mental set, "pow­ erful ideas" would not be learned, multi­ plicity of symbol systems or activities would not cultivate the kinds of general cognitive skills Dickson and Linn describe, and explicit meanings, as Calfee and Olson expect, would not be acquired.