Blog #1 - The Heavy Burden of Knowledge

     From the readings this week one overarching concept stood out to me: humans’ capacity to think deeply is not its strongest function and because of that humans have created tools that help them accomplish tasks that can be done quicker or more efficiently with tools. According to Daniel Willingham, “People are naturally curious, but we are not naturally good thinkers; unless the cognitive conditions are right, we will avoid thinking.” (pg. 1) While, thinking is not necessarily humans’ greatest strength, humans gain pleasure when solving problems (Willingham, 2009, pg 9). One the biggest conditions Willingham suggests in getting people to think then is curiosity and interest. Other conditions Willingham suggests in producing successful thought relate directly to your brain's “information from the environment, room in working memory, and the required facts and procedures in long-term memory” (pg. 17). All of these conditions are hard to achieve at once however, they can ultimately lead to critical thinking. 

    James Gee believes that “humans + tools are a winning combination” in successfully completing a task or acquiring knowledge (pg. 83). This combination of knowledge and ability being shared is referred to as “distributed cognition” (Gee, 2013, pg. 83). However, Gee discusses several cautions in his article about allowing tools too much power. One of his cautions he suggests is that as tools get better “more people can do more things, but we get less learning and fewer transferable skills (less “value added,” we might say).” (Gee, 2013, pg. 85) Another possible negative effect of tools becoming more effective is that there are fewer individual experts about those tools and more people who serve as a “mere adjunct to the machine” (pg. 3). These possible effects of tools can lead humans to a heavy reliance on technology they don’t understand and little critical thinking or learning.

    Both articles have made me reflect deeper on both how I help create conditions that promote critical thinking and tools that I provide for my students to be successful. Before reading Daniel Willingham’s article I was not aware of how much rely on of previous experiences when thinking or completing tasks. It makes so much sense why novel activities are so challenging to accomplish at first (like tying your shoe). For my students, much of the tasks or information they are learning is brand new. They have very little to no experience with it. Therefore, it has made me even more aware of how important it is to help my students make connections to previous experiences before teaching them new concepts. Additionally, it has made me reflect on the amount of cognitive load required when thinking and learning. At the end of a workday, I am generally exhausted, however I often am not learning totally new things. My students on the other hand are often required to do new things frequently through a school day. A wondering I had after reading James Gee’s article was “if am I truly teaching my student about the tools they use?” This wondering prompted me to think about how I can better assure my students are still acquiring transferable skills while still using technology. One of the ways I hope to accomplish this is through teaching them about the tools they use and teaching them to have a critical lens when using them. 

References 

Willingham, D. T. (2009). Why Don’t Students Like School? In Why don't students like school?: A cognitive scientist answers questions about how The mind works and what it means for the classroom (2nd ed., pp. 1–25). essay, Jossey-Bass.

Gee, J. P. (2013). When Not to Trust Experts. In The Anti-Education ERA: Creating smarter students through digital learning (pp. 83–99). essay, Palgrave Macmillan.