Community Contribution #4 – Affordances of Platforms that Support PLNs

While it has been easy to learn through my Personal Learning Network, this week’s exploration of affordances has made me aware of how much thinking I am allowing technology to do for me. In terms of my bassoon studies, I use YouTube, Google, and CDs of performances, as well as various forms of AI programs, to find out about performances, to compare performances of the same piece, and to research questions that I have about a particular piece or technique.

External resources support our learning by reducing the mental load to perform a task. The Internet becomes part of our transactive memory system, and the task is no longer to recall information but to recall where we stored that information in the first place. As mentioned earlier, this allows us to focus more on practicing and applying the information we find.

There are aspects of learning, however, that may be lost through my external memory. Risco and Gilbert found in their studies that people who use the Internet as part of their external memory systems have difficulty distinguishing between what they know and what the Internet knows. So even though, as a student, I feel like I know a piece of musical concept because I have external information to refer to, I may not actually know it at all.

As I reflect further on this, I will need to be aware of the way that my mental models of technology are influenced by my experiences with them. I suspect that being a strong ‘digital learner’ requires more than simple competence to use digital resources. I need to become more aware of when technology is facilitating my thinking and when it is doing my thinking for me. Where do we draw the line between appropriate cognitive support and over-reliance on PLN/technology?