Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Computers are classically viewed as amplifiers of cognition. An alternative conceptualization is offered of computer as reorganizer of mental functioning. Software analyses illuminate the advantages of the latter approach for new visions of the potential cognitive benefits of computers. A new result emerges: Because the cognitive technologies we invent serve as instruments of cultural redefinition (shaping who we are by changing, not just amplifying, what we do), defining educational values becomes a foreground issue. The demands of an information society make an explicit emphasis on general cognitive skills a priority. The urgency of updating educations goals and methods recommends an activist research paradigm: to simultaneously create and study changes in processes and outcomes of human learning with new cognitive and educational tools. The computer, that symbolic workhorse and supreme number-cruncher, has lately become a central topic of thought and discussion for educators and psychologists. Brought by the advent of inexpensive and relatively powerful software for personal computers, now within the budgetary considerations of most if not all school systems, the uses of computers have raised many seminal questions about the future of education and for the research community in psychology and education. What exactly does Parts of this paper were presented at the annual meetings
Roy Pea (Sun,) studied this question.