24.3.9 Summary of the Foundations for Cognitive Tools Research
The following principles sum up the foundations for the research findings reviewed in the rest of this chapter:
Cognitive tools will have their greatest effectiveness when they are applied within constructivist learning environments.
Cognitive tools empower learners to design their own representations of knowledge rather than absorbing knowledge representations preconceived by others.
Cognitive tools can be used to support the deep reflective thinking that is necessary for meaningful learning.
As a form of cognitive technology, cognitive tools have two kinds of important cognitive effects, those that are with the technology in terms of intellectual partnerships and those that are of the technology in terms of cognitive residue that remains after the cognitive tools are used.
Cognitive tools enable mindful, challenging learning, rather than the effortless learning promised but rarely realized by other instructional innovations.
The source of the tasks or problems to which cognitive tools are applied should be learners, guided by teachers and other resources in the learning environment.
Ideally, tasks or problems for the application of cognitive tools should be situated in realistic contexts, with results that are personally meaningful for learners.
Cognitive tools do not contain preconceived intelligence in the sense that intelligent tutoring systems are claimed to possess, but they do enable intellectual partnerships in the form of distributed cognitive processing.