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Exploiting the Use of Technology to Teach

Teaching is a dynamic activity-a dynamic transaction between mind, materials, outcomes, and goals. Teachers teach; learners learn-all within the context of a complex cognitive and socio-cultural environment that is evolving faster than at any other time in the history of education. The principle factor responsible for this evolution is the development of technology-technological achievements at the end of the 20th Century that have revolutionized the way people communicate, exchange ideas, inform one another, and learn (U.S. Department ofEducation, 2005). This special issue is devoted to an examination of that achievement-not the achievement per se, but the way teachers learn to exploit technological achievements to teach-how the teaching-learning process is leveraged through the use of technology, and how teachers transform, and are transformed by, their experiences with technology. And yet, there is a major contemporary problem with technology use in education. Technology does not see widespread implementation in the classroom. According to Rod Paige (2005), the former U.S. Secretary of Education, "Education is the only business still debating the usefulness of technology. Schools remain unchanged for the most part, despite numerous reforms and increased investments in computers and networks." (p. 22). Even the U.S. Department ofEducation's National Education Technology Report (2005) stated that, while virtually every public school has access to the Internet; in most schools " ... it is business as usual. Computers are enclosed in computer rooms rather than being a central part of the learning experience." (p. 22). The report contends that it "is not necessarily lack of funds, but the lack of adequate training and lack of understanding of how computers can be used to enrich the learning experience." (p.22). In the present journal, the latter issue has been addressed directly-the way computers and other technological devices need to be understood by teachers, and the way the devices can be successfully used to enhance the processes and outcomes oflearning. The papers in this edition address this issue in the context of distributed cognition. In the present paper, I will discuss distributed cognition as a heuristic with which to think about the way learners learn and teachers teach. First, I will inventory the basic tenets of the concept; next, I will consider learning from a distributed cognition point of view; finally, I will discuss distributed cognition relative to the findings of the investigations presented herein.