Learning about (e-)learning

What happens when you wear your researcher-hat while watching YouTube videos

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 | e-learning, education, learning, reflection | No Comments

Once in a while it happens that I find some animation on the web that’s actually relevant to my work. Yes, it does happen - rarely. Well, this is one of those instances and this little cartoon rings many bells and raises many questions about children and computers.I hope you’ve got enough steam to read my thoughts once you’ve watched it.

This little movie raises a number of interesting questions. Firstly, how much of a ‘buddy’ does a laptop become? Here it’s given a human form and a very real presence. While this is obviously a work of fiction it’s maybe not so far off reality where we do become somewhat emotionally attached to our gadgets. (Anybody feels uncomfortable to leave home without the laptop? (I do) Anybody a bit sad to turn off your old phone for the last time having replaced it with a new one? (I did)) Even in it’s boxy state it’s a ‘buddy’. Imagine the attachment once we’ve populated the machine with an ‘intelligent agent’ - this work is being done now and although it might take a few years yet, it’s certainly not a fantasy. (And I’m talking about something more complex and less irritating than the paperclip!)

That raises another question: if the computer is a ‘buddy’, to what extent can it be seen as Vygotsky’s ‘more knowledgeable peer’ rather than just a tool for operating on information? Can ‘loving your computer’ lead to learning? Currently, I’d say it’s unlikely. I love my computer. Even though I don’t imbue it with human qualities (at least not enough to talk to in hushed tones in the library), I definitely and perhaps excessively love my computer. Still, ‘I operate it’ rather than ‘we operate together’. It is to me still a machine which provides me a window upon content created by other humans - a window which I choose to point in various directions.

But this line is shifting: take Stumbleupon. How do you think I found this animation? I didn’t search for it. A community of ‘taggers’ and ’stumblers’ enabled by the internet thew the video my way when I pressed that faithful (and oh so time consuming) Stumble button. Having watched the video it made me wonder, reflect and write this blog post. Now, how is that not a ‘more knowledgeable peer’?

The computer is also presented in the cartoon as an extender of the child’s capabilities - in the sense of ‘distributed cognition‘. In that sense it’s a tool, just as a piece of paper where you can write a memo to yourself - it remembers and displays.

Finally I put myself in the shoes of the principal. Is it right to take the computer away from the kid? Or is there some way to reconcile World of Warcraft with maths? I believe there must be and I don’t think prohibition is the way. Yesterday we talked to some parents at a PTA meeting, some of whom had taken quite a radican stance on regulating computers. At the same time these very parents were aware that this tactic might backfire and cause their children to be obsessed with the machines. Surely the balance must lay elsewhere than in severe restriction of access to computers, but rather in negotiating a reasonable position that the child can agree with and in support of the development of the child’s capabilities to regulate their own use.

There you have it. - As spoken by someone without kids.