What to Do When You Don't Lecture

Second Life as Experiential Learning

Second life as experiential learning.
Dan Riordan, 12-20-09
Second Life should be viewed as a spot for experiential learning, not as a game. This thesis holds a number of implications for educators wishing to use this 3D immersive environment.

One avenue of thought about the use of Second Life, or a 3D immersive virtual environment, is that instructors should reconfigure courses so that they provide the same type of environment as video games, thus providing the learning benefits that those games provide. Games are intriguing, but hard to pin down for this stage of use of SL. Games include, as Michelle Dickey explains, narratives that are used to solve problems. Educational narratives would contain an initial challenge, potential obstacles, personal roles, an environment with specified dimensions, a back story, and ‘cut scenes’ (basically check points that affirm a decision or set a new course of action).

While there are similarities between Dickey’s framework and the structure of any investigation, at this point most instructors are unable to visualize their course as a narrative. Even if they can so envision a course, the technological difficulties of creating the interactive environment in SL are insurmountable for most instructors. Just as the web did not become a popular site for educators until it became extremely easy to upload items to a website, so SL will not become a site for redesigning courses into games until the creation mechanism is simplified. Many, probably almost all, instructors will not spend the time and energy needed to create a game environment/narrative for learning, for instance, quadratic equations, microeconomics, or inorganic chemistry.

A key game possibility, however, is that games allow participants to create identities. Educational spaces also allow students to create identities. Sarah Robbins, in a talk at the University of North Carolina, discusses how all spaces project and create identities. She points out that a lecture hall creates two identities, the person in charge and everyone else. She notes, though, that a lab creates an identity where a student can ‘play’ (or practice, or assume the identity of) a scientist.

In terms of Second Life, then, a different and interesting question presents itself: Can an immersive 3D virtual environment help instructors create the identity we want students to assume in our courses? Robbins uses examples from her own experience of teaching composition and rhetoric in Second Life. She assigns research problems, requires students to create solutions, then requires them to create ‘poster sessions’ to which residents of SL are invited. Students become the kind of researcher that most composition courses require. The 3D environment provides a space for them to conduct and report on research, in addition to the activities and writings in the face-to-face component of their course.

Experiential learning implies face-to-face as well as outside-of-class activities. The goal of such experiential assignment is to help students focus “on the two fundamental activities of learning: grasping and transforming experience” (Holzer and Andruet). In Humanities courses these experiences reflect “the desire to restore to the humanities its liberal education mission of fostering involved citizenship and active ownership of ideas” (Nikitina 43).

Typically in introductory experiential learning situations (as opposed to advanced situations like an internship where students are usually not in a formal class) students are centered in a face-to-face class, working with an instructor. In the class they familiarize themselves with essential skills related to ‘playing,’ or practicing, the type of expert that this particular class develops (historian, mathematician, engineer). For the experiential assignment, they spend large amounts of time outside of class engaging in activities that require them to use the skills and build the attitudes and expertise that the course promotes in the curriculum.

Could immersion in a virtual world provide the experiential learning in a course? Like hybrid web-enhanced courses, students would meet regularly face-to-face but then spend research/experiential time in Second Life, completing assignments that fulfill the call of Nikitina and Holzer and Andruet to experience, own, grasp and transform their in-class learning. At present it seems to me that this should be the chosen path of those who wish to experiment with teaching in a virtual 3D world.

It is possible that eventually we will be able to create a ‘math space’ or a ‘grammar space’ where the student, given the identity of problem solver in a narrative game world, overcomes obstacles and collaborates to achieve the status grammar hero. But for now, it seems much easier for us to consider thinking of and using virtual 3D worlds as ‘field trips’ or ‘in-class service learning’ or ‘internships’ in which we send students out from our classrooms into the ‘world’ in order to experience situations that will encourage the expertise we desire.

Michele D. Dickey. “Game Design Narrative for Learning: Appropriating Adventure Game Design Narrative Devices and Techniques for the Design of Interactive Learning Environments.” Educational Technology Research and Development 54.3 (2006), 245-63. Viewed 12-20-09:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/h3gn553h68002q47/

Siegfried M. Holzer and Raul H. Andruet. Experiential Learning in Mechanics with Multimedia
Viewed 12-20-09: http://www.succeed.ufl.edu/papers/Expmechmult.pdf

Svetlana Nikitina. “Applied Humanities: Bridging the Gap Between Building Theory and Fostering Citizenship.” Liberal Education. Winter 2009, 36-43.

Sarah Robbins. “Creating Authentic and Engaging Community-Oriented Learning Spaces.” March 17, 2007. UNC-Chapel Hill. Viewed 12-20-09 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueAcz7ZyFpM&feature=related

Changes in Blooms Taxonomy

Bloom’s Taxonomy Is Now Different


In 2001, Lorin Anderson and David Krathwohl and others published A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. This team made some far ranging changes to the original 1948 version of the Taxonomy. This note deals with three of the changes.

First, what is an objective? Anderson and Krathwohl say that an objective contains a verb and a noun. The verb “generally describes the intended cognitive process, and the noun generally describes the knowledge students are expected to acquire or construct (12).” This definition is the key concept for the entire approach. A sample objective is “Evaluate commercials from the standpoint of a set of principles.” The verb is evaluate and the noun (noun phrase in this case) is set of principles.

Second, what do the verb and noun tell you? They tell you where the objective belongs in the new taxonomy. The new taxonomy has a major change—it is a table, not a pyramid. In other words, it is two-dimensional. The cognitive domain is represented by 6 columns and the knowledge domain is represented by four rows. Any objective falls in a cell in the table.

The six cognitive domains are remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create. The four knowledge domains are factual, conceptual, procedural and metacognitive. In two excellent chapters the authors define all ten of these concepts and their sub-types. An important differentiation from the old taxonomy is that the authors do not claim that a lower level must be mastered before a higher one can be mastered. Instead they focus on retention and transfer. They say that both are important educational goals. “Retention is the ability to remember material at some later time in much the same way as it was presented during instruction. Transfer is the ability to use what was learned to solve new problem, to answer new questions, or to facilitate learning new subject matter” (63).

This distinction is the basis for splitting the table. Remember is the process related to retention. All the others are related to transfer, which the authors say is ‘meaningful learning.’ The goal for educators is to help create meaningful learning, thus educators must use objectives that focus on transfer.

The layout of the table, however, shows educators that the various cognitive processes for meaningful learning can be spread over four different domains of knowledge. A student could analyze conceptual knowledge or analyze procedural knowledge. A student could understand factual knowledge or evaluate factual knowledge.

Third, to use the table the authors ask educators to ask four questions—the learning question, the instruction question, the assessment question and the alignment question. These questions frame the way instructors teach. Of particular importance is the alignment question.

Here are the questions

1. What is important for students to learn in the limited school and classroom time available?

2. How does on plan and deliver instruction that will result in higher levels of learning for large numbers of students?

3. How does one select or design assessment instruments and procedures that provide accurate information about how well students are learning?

4. How does one ensure that objectives, instruction, and assessment are consistent with one another?

In the last half of the book Anderson and Krathwohl focus on answering these questions by analyzing a set of six vignettes sent to them by practicing teachers at different educational levels. These analyses illustrate how a teacher can use the taxonomy to set up types of learning that will become meaningful and also how to guide their work so that what they do has consistency, or aligns.

Sesame Street and Laptops in Class

Malcolm Gladwell offers in the Tipping Point concepts to consider in a laptop environment. Gladwell contends, among other things, that small changes in environment can cause large changes in behavior. I would like to explore using his ideas in our laptop environment. One of his examples is the clean-up of the New York subway system. As he recounts it the system in the 80s was essentially a ‘rat hole.’ Its cars were filled with trash, the trains were slow, the level of petty crime and annoyance high. To paraphrase him, many people acted like rats because they were in a rathole. The fix occurred when authorities went after petty crime, notably turn stile jumping and graffiti painting. Using different techniques the authorities effectively ended both activities and, so the account goes, other crime decreased. In Gladwell’s terms, changing the environment changed the behavior and that change because authorities found a way to ‘tip’ the actions and eventually the attitudes.

As I read the book I kept wondering whether the tipping point concept could be applied to the laptop issues that are apparent at Stout. Depending on whom you talk to, on the negative side, the essential issue is that students display an insulting lack of respect by using laptops to distract themselves from the content being covered in the class, or they put themselves in the inattentive position of not learning what they should learn. Still, before I go on, I need to point out that the DLE surveys conducted by BPA indicate a high degree of satisfaction with laptop involvement in learning. Students point to areas such as posting course content, organizing course content, providing feedback, and extending the classroom outside of class time. Interestingly that list of responses essentially contains items that function outside of class not inside class, which is where the usage issue I am focusing on occurs.

Anecdotal and some empirical evidence indicates a wide range of attitudes and actions. Instructors have told me that they have no policy and let students use laptops however they wish, that they have the class make the rules about laptop usage, that they force students who intend to distract themselves to sit in the last two rows, that they have converted to finding ways to focus class activities on laptops’ capabilities, that they refuse to allow any laptops in class, that they have covers up and covers down periods in a class, that they police usage and deny continued usage to individuals who get caught often enough. I have heard much less from students. In at least two places they reveal some of their attitudes. In the Digital Learning Environment Survey Spring 2009 report (BPA, http://www.uwstout.edu/bpa/ir/surveyresults/laptopfin09.pdf p. 31)some students indicate that they are annoyed and distracted by other students surfing. In the Speech Academic Transformation Project report (http://www3.uwstout.edu/ntlc/OnCampusOpportunities/upload/ATP-Final-Report_Fundamentals-of-Speech.pdf) a majority of students reported at least some use. The most frequent responses were occasionally or seldom, roughly 65%. Never received about 20% and frequently received about 15%. Also in the Speech ATP report students indicate that they do not feel that they miss any of the content of the class, essentially maintaining that they can pay attention to two things at once. Overall, the majority of students [roughly 70%] … reported disagreeing or strongly disagreeing that they missed important class information while on non-related websites during class. But that means 30% either agreed or strongly agreed that they missed course content. At least one group has complained to the chancellor about other students’ usage for non-class related sites.

At one point Gladwell discusses children’s attention to television. He is interested in the topic because he is explaining ‘stickiness,’ the quality of any message that makes it memorable. He indicates that in the early years of the Sesame Street program researchers tested how distraction affected comprehension. The researchers discovered that children derived the same level of comprehension of content as they watched the show regardless of whether they were in a room full of toys as they watched (and played with the toys) or in a room that had only the tv to watch.

The study he references was conducted by Lorch, Anderson and Levin. As the authors speculate on the meaning of their findings, they contemplate one possibility that that could explain the children’s retention of information about the show: “we suggest that children monitor the sound track primarily at a superficial level of detecting the presence of auditory attributes which indicate informative content or which indicate changes in content (726).” In other words the children had learned to listen for certain cues, somewhat like the situation of being drawn out of one conversation when you hear your name mentioned in another conversation. Lorch suggests that children learn to listen for signal words or cues “for informative and comprehensible program content” which thus “elicit[s] their full attention (726)”

They further speculate that children pay attention to the visual imagery (the tv show on screen) “until the content becomes either incomprehensible, redundant, or not otherwise visually and auditorily attractive…at which time the children return to their alternative activity (726).” And lastly, for this piece, they indicate that “those portions of the program which were most poorly understood received relatively low attention whereas those which were better comprehended received relatively high attention (725)”.

As I read the previous sentence, I wondered if we could substitute for ‘comprehension’ the terms ‘cared about’ and ‘related to’ and find that the same phenomenon exists in our courses. On the other hand, does this study indicate something about the relationship of comprehensibility and attention? Do we give incomprehensible class times? Granted the students in this study were pre-schoolers, still, is there a chance that considering this work would help us find ways to view the laptop learning issues other than many of the ways now in the culture?

Is it possible to tip the situation so that the emotion goes away? Instructor attitudes seem to revolve around How dare you and student attitudes seem to resolve around Whatever. Can we affect the situation in any way? First, I suppose we could find out how many of each group have that attitude. Second we could propose or activate a strategy to tip the situation so that it feels and acts like an effective learning situation for both instructors and students.

Could we just ask a large number of students ‘Why do you surf while you are in class?’ And could we probe to find out if they are bored, disengaged, listening for cue words, not comprehending the material, actually feeling disrespectful, simply following their instincts? Could we ask instructors about their emotions and policies in laptop classrooms? What complexities both personal and professional would we find in those results?

Lorch et al suggest, not very specifically, that “At least for preschool children, the most effective production strategies appear to be those which enhance comprehension and thus, also, visual attention.” (726) Well, sure, but what would those ‘enhance comprehension’ strategies be? Clarity? Organization? Examples? Narratives? Sesame street approaches?

Academic Transformation Pilot Project for Fundamentals of Speech. [UW-Stout]. June 2009. Prepared by Wendy Marston and Amanda Brown. Available at http://www3.uwstout.edu/ntlc/OnCampusOpportunities/upload/ATP-Final-Report_Fundamentals-of-Speech.pdf
Digital Learning Environment Survey Spring 2009. UW-Stout BPA, July 2009, Available at http://www.uwstout.edu/bpa/ir/surveyresults/laptopfin09.pdf)
Gladwell, Malcolm. The Tipping Point. New York: Little, Brown, 2002.
Lorch, Elizabeth Pugzles, Daniel R. Anderson and Stephen Levin. The Relationship of visual Attention to Children’s comprehension of Television. Child Development, 1979, 50, 722-727.

participant centered NTLC

Video on Laptop as Social Network

Sacraments, Social Networks, Farm Teams

Sacramental and Social Networks and creating a farm team

I have these three ideas. I won’t try to explain them, just jot notes.

When you are in class with a laptop, you are in class technologized to your social network. A class then is a group of people all independently connected to their social network. In the old days a teacher could assume that for at least an hour students abandoned their social networks, left them literally at the door, and entered the social network of the class. No longer true. The class as a social network now competes with all the independent networks. The teacher must facilitate a way either to get all those networks to be part of and contribute to the class network, or to eliminate or at least minimize the independent social networks. I need to think though how to do that..

Perhaps sacramental will help. Thomas Merton suggests that even a landscape is sacramental, by which he means a site the experience of which leads to a satisfying connection to spiritual power. Actually he says that it leads to grace which is sharing in the life of God. I need to use the generalized statement.. I can use it to explain the attraction, even power, of landscapes, photographs, art, architecture. Each object becomes a sacramental site. But a further thought on sacraments. They define who is in, or to whom the connection is extended. Only members of Catholicism, for instance can receive Holy Orders or Extreme Unction. Baptism is what makes you a member. Other sacraments define a way of life—confession, communion, confirmation. I like the model, the generalized one, because it gives me an explanation of the power of the aesthetic and extends the aesthetic to all areas of life.

Now if we combine social networks, which in a way are sacramental, you join, you have communion, you proclaim yourself as a member of the group, you draw nearly constant strength from being a member and partaking in the sacraments. So how does the class achieve that status? The old rituals of registration are no longer effective, well efficacious is what I mean. They have the same quaint or oldtime presence that taking part in a bonfire ceremony on December 21 has, perhaps neat, but mostly something you do to get along with a group. Could a class achieve the status of replacing or at least joining all those independent social networks? If so, how?

Now on to the Farm Team. It has occurred to me that as a Director of a faculty development organization, I am a bottleneck. Here is the issue. I receive many ideas about possible development activities—grants, short tip or problem-solving sessions, long research sessions. The problem is that though the flow in is heavy and rich, the flow out is thin, narrow. The lake forms behind me, a stream trickles out from me. In other words, I don’t have anyone to easily send the message to with the expectation that I am not more or less begging them to take it, but offering them an opportunity that they want to be part of. I have a few people, my small team, that I can turn to, but they simply can’t absorb all the ideas; they can’t, in other words, act on the opportunities. There are too many opportunities. So I fill up the available reservoirs and have a lot left over with no place to go. If I may change the metaphor what I have is a situation where I have a major league site, but just now I haven’t filled out the roster. I can’t make any trades. All I can do is put people in the farm team and grow them into major leaguers (not that the people are not major leaguers personally, but that they are not on my team and often don’t have any idea of wha I have to offer). OK, I need to create a farm team. Or to put it another way, I need to build a new large reservoir so I can move the flow coming in out to a place just as large. How do I do that? How do I put people in the situation where they are on my team and ready for the opportunities I have to offer. I can’t trade for them; like major league teams I have to build the organization.

So, to brainstorm: I send out agents to recruit? I offer good deals to free agents? What do recruits need in order to join my social network? I am not sure. Perhaps I can offer 10 1k grants? But are grants the best? Could I offer 10 1K something else? Summer contracts? What would 10K buy in terms of personal satisfaction—speakers? The hallway groups? How many players do I need? Could I have, or aim for, a set number, a critical mass? Like 50 people on a special list?

Does Technology Cause Learning--(Quite Long, sorry)

Learning Through Technology

My question today is Do you learn through technology? I see this as a slightly different question than do you learn with technology? Let me explore both.

First, some assumptions. Right now I am assuming that the end product of the learning process remains the same. (perhaps this is it, the learning is a process not the product). In the end a good paper is a good paper, and the same with two other items, a good photograph and a good fitting pair of pants. End products are always created by technology. So there have been written documents for easily 2500 years. During that time superb documents, classics for the ages, have been composed using quill and parchment technology. The great Roman works, the Declaration of Independence, and the Gettysberg Address come to mind. The assumption I would make is that these documents are the definition of good. If a document is as good as they are, then that document is good, regardless of the technology used to create it.
The same is true of early photographs--say Steichen's. His images are good. Any image, created in any way, must be as good as that, and can't be any better than that. And the same is true of pants fitting. Regardless of how they are made, by hand stitching or machine, a good fit is a good fit.

The interesting thing about this is that new technologies replace old ones and no one goes back to the old ones. Word processors have for many people replaced pen and paper which in turn replaced quill and parchment. Even though a person could still produce a paper using either of the previous two, once you move to the new, you don't go back to the old, and you certainly don't go back two versions. You probably go can and do go back to pen and ink, but the number of people who would go back to quill and parchment is infinitesimally small.

So in terms of learning once you know a thing, you know it, regardless of how you got there. I know that Washington was the first president. I can't improve on my grasp of that fact and no one can really have a better grasp of that fact than I do. But of course someone can know a whole lot more about the implications of that fact. For instance I also know, from crossword puzzles, that Edo is the old name for Toyko. I know that as well as the residents of Toyko know it, but I have no sense whatever of the implications of that fact, a condition that I will return to later.

On to the second question. Do you learn with technology? Well, yes you do. To learn you go to a class room, use a pen and notebook to take notes, read from a book or magazine. Or you go to a lab and use various instruments to perform operations on various objects, and record the results of those operations using paper and ink, and pens. In other words it is fairly clear that you interact with a technological world in order to learn, and that learning, in one way, is interacting with the technological world.

Now, the interaction with the technological world can impede your ability to produce a quality document. You have to master the technology in order to make it work for you. Of course many technologies work hard to reduce this need to learn. Hooking up a TV to a cable system is now much easier than it was just five years ago. Then you had to manually cause the TV to 'memorize' each channel available on the system. Now the TV does that by itself, thus making it much easier (and thus desirable) to buy and use such a TV. The same is true say of overheads. If I know how to make an overhead, using a clear acetate sheet, and a typed page, I can conceive of the idea, open the software program, type, save, and print the document, go to the master maker, run the sheet and the acetate through the machine and take it to class and project it on the screen using the projector that is there in the class. I know before I start that I have mastered this process and that I can go from nothing to displayed-in-class in about five minutes. However, I could also do the exact same thing with a PowerPoint slide, in less time, if I open my laptop, open PowerPoint, type the slide, save it, and carry the laptop to class where I connect it to the cord, turn on the overhead and project it from my computer onto the wall. But the point here is that if I do not know the technology of laptops, PowerPoint, and the classroom LCD projection system, I will not use the technology, because it will take longer, I am not sure of the results (which I need to be sure of since I need it for a point in class), and I wish to avoid frustration.

In other words I cannot produce a quality document in PowerPoint until I master PowerPoint and the attendant display system. Thus my students will not use the electronic technology to learn, nor will I use it to teach, until I master the technology, though presumably the end product is as good and as effective whichever technology I use.

Let me go on. If I learn the technology, I can make a better end product, in some ways. So, for instance, I can eliminate reader discomfort by typing the essay, thus they do not have to decipher my bad handwriting. I can eliminate little errors in my photographs by touching them up with Photoshop. I can achieve better because I know how to use the technology. I am able to learn with technology because I can bring the photo onto the screen, change it, and make it better. I can do this process faster and easier on screen than I ever could by using a dark room. Notice the important part in the above description. It is the "change it and make it better"--the need to change it and the identification of the item to eliminate reside in my head, I think. I have amalgamated that into my value or judgment systems and I come to that conclusion and then I use the technology to fix it. There are variations on this process. So as I type, my program keeps underlining in green the two spaces I use after a period. It is signaling me that this item is wrong and should be corrected. If I eliminate one of the spaces, the green underline goes away and I have a better paper. And if I type "teh" the program will automatically rearrange the letters and place "the" on the page. In other words the technology makes my paper better even though I have not learned to type correctly. It finds and fixes the error.

Now this find and fix appears to have a social dimension. How would I or the program know to find and fix? It is because I have had iterations--other times that I have done this--that have been compared to a standard created by others and explained in one way or another to me by others. So I might not see that a particular bright spot, or background item, hinders the effectiveness of a photo. But if other people who have mastery look at my work and use the standard that they have internalized as part of their becoming a master and if they apply that to my work, showing me what is wrong and explaining the principle to me, then I internalize it and use it in my work. The same can be said of well fitting pants. If I wear pants that are too long or short, I still cover my legs. But if someone else points out to me, as they do on Queer Eye on the Straight Guy, that my pants are ill-fitting and then show me how to judge well-fitting, I am able to internalize their principle and then in the future use the internalized principle and apply it to other pairs of pants. In other words the ability to make things better comes from not just my abilities with technology and with judgment, but also comes from my interaction with other people who have attained mastery in this system (paper, photo, pants).

This, of course, seems to be avoiding the question. I can make a better photograph using technology but do I learn through the technology? In other words even if I have a better understanding of technology, I am not, it seems, able to make a better paper than you. If you are a better writer than I, then your paper will be better even if I know word processing very well and you hand write it and have someone else type it.

Do I learn through technology, do I HAVE to learn through technology, in order to achieve the mastery that I need to show that I have learned? In other words can technology assemble in my head what I need in order to have a better product? Well for doctors there seems to be a situation where something like that happens. A good doctor analyzes a situation, and takes a course of action which allows a cure. However, in a complicated problem the doctor will take blood, urine, even fecal samples and have them analyzed by technological tests to identify ingredients, say potassium levels or the presence of certain kinds of bacteria. As a result of the piece of paper that he or she receives with the results on, he or she makes a decision on a course of action. The technology has performed all the analysis for the doctor. What the doctor has to be able to do is apply principles, gotten from other iterations and other interpretations from other doctors, in order to effect a cure. The analysis shows this level of potassium, thus prescribe this pill, that type of bacteria, thus this antibiotic.

Let’s go in a different direction. Let’s say that learning is the result of encountering something new (in various ways, problems and curiosity being two obvious ones), then working on relating it to prior knowledge, manipulating the relevant data, and reflecting on your process of dealing with the new item. This model is one put forth in How People Learn and seems robust. Can technology help with either of these three subprocesses? Well obviously it can. A person can perform any of the three using a technology, though, of course, no technology is required. For example if I wander off the trail and get lost but know that the mountain range was behind me as I entered the forest, and if I know that if I walk toward the mountains I will eventually hit the road, then when I walk toward them, find the road and my car, I will have solved my problem without any technology whatever.

Of course, if I had used a compass or a map I could have solved my problem with the aid of technology, an interaction that is absolutely essential if I get lost in a canoe in a fog on a lake with many islands. But what CAN technology do by itself to help me learn or to help me learn better? Granted the learning model I posited above, can technology help me relate, manipulate or reflect better? Well, first of all it could help me manipulate data faster and more thoroughly, showing history, range and patterns more quickly than I could produce by myself. In that way technology is a kind of ‘social learning community’, like a group of research assistants, it can find and present data faster than I could collect and arrange it. So it can help me that way. I can perhaps even be more assured that my data and my manipulations are correct, so the conclusions I draw are more useful. The example of the map and compass in the fog seem appropriate here.


But relating to prior knowledge or reflecting on process and implication, do not seem as amenable to technological intervention. I suppose I could technologize my prior knowledge and use technology to search likely areas that my memory suggests, helping me contact something essentially historical for me—a photo, an article, something I wrote. Again the technological ability appears to be speed, efficiency and range. I still have to interact with the technology to send it on its research journey. I have to tell it where to look. I could also use it to create a web of assistance with prior knowledge, asking others for their memories. There is nothing particularly technical about this act, except that I can ask lots of people and receive lots of answers relatively quickly.

So that brings me to reflection. It strikes me that this process is hard to technologize. I could use word processing to type out my reflections, or audio recording to speak them, but aside from making a record, which is good, the technology does not particularly help me, unless I argue as some do that the act of creating, especially in writing, is the act of discovery. But anyone who has ever been in a good conversation knows that the same level of discovery is possible simply by the interaction. I don’t know that technology can help you reflect better.

As I look at what I have written, I see speed, range, efficiency, social community both technical and personal, ease of contacting data. In the end then technology can help me learn better if I see it as other than learning that Washington was the first president. What the technology does do is allow me to create iterations faster, and if iterations are a basic cause of realigning brain synapses then that is a major help. If I can be surer of my data, as supplied by my technological community, then I can reflect with more confidence, and I should be able to probe my history with more confidence. The confidence level should affect my quality as a learner—because I would be closer to the expert capability of chunking my knowledge and drawing on the most relevant parts in order to solve future problems.

All by itself does technology change the need to invest myself in the process? No. but once I invest what does it allow me? My answer at this time would be that it allows me speed and confidence so that I can successfully encounter more problems. It then gives me two things, the solution to the current problem and the expertise to deal with the future. Other ways will—and obviously have—grant the same allowance. However, as no one will return to the quill pen, no one will return to laborious book searching by lone individuals, at least not for most of the problems. Can technology help you learn better? Well, yes, if you see that not just finding the answer is what you mean by learning.