Module Response: Cognitivism

Question: How could software applications and/or other technologies help you provide opportunities for your students to access their prior knowledge and better organize new information? That is, describe a lesson for which you might use technology to help with organization and describe the technology(ies) you might use.

Response: According to the cognitive views of learning, the learners learn best when new information is linked to prior knowledge and put into an organized storage in the long-term memory for future revival. In social studies, there is a lot of information that seems abstract to students because its difficult for young people to truly imagine life, situations, decisions, debates, reasonings and circumstances outside of their own world - heck, I don't even think they fully understand even that! For example, its hard for the students to imagine why colonial women would wear uncomfortable corsets and burdensome wigs as symbols of wealth - no matter how many times I explained that it was a sign of beauty and indication of socio-economic class, they respond with: "... but that's just ugly and its so stupid to put yourself in so much pain!" Fortunately, history is filled with predicable patterns and themes! Therefore, its easy to find present day scenarios that are already in the students' prior knowledge and make the connection to historical concepts - thus providing a better system of organization for future retrieval of information.

Technology can definitely help learners organize new information by tapping into familiar prior knowledge. Referring back to the colonial gentry wardrobe example - a software can be designed to ask modern & age-specific questions that would trigger a natural response... like "what clothings are uncomfortable?" - this question is easy for students of all ages to answer. The follow-up question on the next screen could be "why do people wear them?" - which should also be easily answered. These two trigger questions will help the students understand the seemingly unreasonable choice of clothing for colonial women would be less foreign. Where does technology come in? Well, students would probably respond well to games - so if a software program organize information thematically into parallel flow charts and invite students to try the modern scenario first (high heels --> uncomfortable --> but it looks good) and right under this chart students can organize the new information in familiar flow chart (corset --> uncomfortable --> but it shows off wealth). This flow chart can link so many repeated themes throughout so many different time periods in history - matching cause and effect, action and reaction, long-term cause and short term cause/effects, conflict and resolution, etc. History often seems daunting to young people because they think it has nothing to do with them today... but software programs can teach them how to learn and organize historical information in the same format as their understanding of their own world.