Changing Minds: Computers, Learning, and Literacy - Softcover

Disessa, Andrea

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262541327 ISBN 13: 9780262541329

Publisher: MIT Press (MA), 2001

Synopsis

An impassioned guide to how computers can fundamentally change how we learn and think.

Andrea diSessa's career as a scholar, technologist, and teacher has been driven by one important question: can education―in particular, science education―be transformed by the computer so that children can learn more, learn more easily at an earlier age, and learn with pleasure and commitment? This book is diSessa's informed and passionate affirmative answer to that question.

While written at a level that anyone with a good acquaintance with high school science can understand, the book reflects the depth and breadth of the issues surrounding technology in education. Rejecting the simplistic notion that the computer is merely a tool for more efficient instruction, diSessa shows how computers can be the basis for a new literacy that will change how people think and learn. He discusses the learning theory that explains why computers can be such powerful catalysts for change in education, in particular, how intuitive knowledge is the platform on which students build scientific understanding. He also discusses the material and social reasons for the computer's potential and argues for "two-way literacies," where everyone is a creator as well as consumer of dynamic and interactive expressive forms. DiSessa gives many examples from his work using the Boxer computer environment, an integrated software system designed to investigate computational literacies.

About this title

About the Author

Andrea diSessa is Chancellor's Professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley, and a member of the National Academy of Education. He is the coauthor of Turtle Geometry: The Computer as a Medium for Exploring Mathematics (MIT Press, 1981).

From Publishers Weekly

Can computers really extend our intelligence? Might new "computational literacies" alter the face of education, expanding and accelerating learning possibilities? Research scholar, teacher and technologist DiSessa thinks so, and posits a future in which computers "will have penetration and depth of influence comparable to what we have already experienced in coming to achieve a mass, text-based literacy." But why should ordinary people learn about not just the function, but the structure of these new tools? DiSessa answers this question through many compelling narratives of how students actually explore sophisticated science and mathematics topics with the "Boxer" software system, a product that DiSessa and his research colleagues have developed to further their research on cognition and learning. Their findings reinforce many of our commonsense understandings about optimal education: that students learn best by doing; that tacit, intuitive knowledge is important to the acquisition of concepts; and that learning needs to be carefully tailored to an individual's domain of competence. DiSessa also concretely illustrates how to lead students toward complex technical competence and become active creators, not just passive consumers, of new technologies. While a good deal of his book is geared toward scientifically and mathematically literate readers, the personal narratives make it accessible to anyone interested in how computers may change not just the way we learn, but the way we think. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0262541327
• ISBN 13: 9780262541329
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 296