Considering Technology: Depth vs Surface Learning

Think, for a moment, about your use of and dependency upon technology.

Does it promote or inhibit your learning and expertise? If it does the latter, how can you become more aware and ensure that this does not become a permanent trend.

When we consider the use of tech, are we fostering depth of knowledge or promoting surface understanding?

Bean, Kyle. Digital image. Http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-great-forgetting/309516/. Theatlantic.com, 23 Oct. 2013. Web.

Bean, Kyle. Digital image. The Atlantic, “All Can Be Lost: The Risk of Putting Our Knowledge in the Hands of Machines” 23 Oct. 2013. Web.

Read and consider Nicholas Carr’s article, “All Can Be Lost: The Risk of Putting Our Knowledge in the Hands of Machines.” (excerpts below)

…Most of us want to believe that automation frees us to spend our time on higher pursuits but doesn’t otherwise alter the way we behave or think. That view is a fallacy—an expression of what scholars of automation call the “substitution myth.” A labor-saving device doesn’t just provide a substitute for some isolated component of a job or other activity. It alters the character of the entire task, including the roles, attitudes, and skills of the people taking part.

…The way computers can weaken awareness and attentiveness points to a deeper problem. Automation turns us from actors into observers. Instead of manipulating the yoke, we watch the screen. That shift may make our lives easier, but it can also inhibit the development of expertise.

… Psychologists have discovered some simple ways to temper automation’s ill effects. You can program software to shift control back to human operators at frequent but irregular intervals; knowing that they may need to take command at any moment keeps people engaged, promoting situational awareness and learning.

… knowing demands doing. One of the most remarkable things about us is also one of the easiest to overlook: each time we collide with the real, we deepen our understanding of the world and become more fully a part of it. While we’re wrestling with a difficult task, we may be motivated by an anticipation of the ends of our labor, but it’s the work itself—the means—that makes us who we are. Computer automation severs the ends from the means. It makes getting what we want easier, but it distances us from the work of knowing. As we transform ourselves into creatures of the screen, we face an existential question: Does our essence still lie in what we know, or are we now content to be defined by what we want? If we don’t grapple with that question ourselves, our gadgets will be happy to answer it for us.

97 thoughts on “Considering Technology: Depth vs Surface Learning

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