Technology as Cognitive Tools: Learners as Designers

Abstract

Technologies of instruction have traditionally been used as conveyors of information, communicators of knowledge, or tutors of students. Our field of educational communications is founded on the premise that communicating content to students will result in learning. In educational communications, information or intelligence (in many different forms) is encoded visually or verbally in the symbols systems employed by each technology. During the instructional process, learners perceive the messages encoded in the medium and sometime interact with the technology. Interaction is normally operationalized in terms of student input to the technology, which triggers some form of answer judging and response from the technology in the form of some previously encoded (canned) message. Technologies as conveyors of information have been used for centuries to teach students by presenting prescribed information to them which they are obligated to learn.