I think I am finally understanding the relationship between Clark and Kozma. So to whoever has to grade my last two minor arguments, if you are reading this, I have to apologize for how much they suck. When I read the prompt about Clark and Kozma, I assumed there had to be a disagreement between the two and went looking for it. I had trouble finding it, but I was traveling and had limited time and all of that and decided to ignore my gut feeling. So, now I understand that Clark was not as much anti-media as he was pro-method and wanted to focus more on how concepts are taught with different tools rather than the tools themselves they are taught with. Kozma was adding a clarification to expand on Clark’s ideas by saying that there was an unnecessary division between method and media in Clark’s article.

I also thought that I heard we were only supposed to use the provided articles for sources. Not sure where I heard that, but I tried to stick with that and found that it is impossible to prove points without the ability to go to as many sources as needed. In a way, it is a relief to find out that we can use other sources because this will make it easier for me to support a position. It will be more work overall, but that work will produce better arguments in the end.

So now I am looking at a new way to frame my discussion about online learning, ed tech, etc. We can’t make people learn faster or better, but we can improve the affordances surrounding learning to improve the overall experience. I typically think that way already, but now need to watch the way I write and talk about these concepts to make sure I don’t give the impression that I think there are ways to make people learn better.

Ultimately, that would also re-frame the Bonner article in my mind to not be a way to use cognitive theory to improve learning, but a way to allow for different affordances that different learners might need. I’m not sure what that will exactly mean for the “learner as a dirty slate” vs the “learner as a clean slate” part of Bonner’s examination, but I still lean towards the dirty slate side as of right now.