Learning Through Technology

By Joseph Reigle

 

In past semesters I found that I did not discover how much I really learned until a few weeks after the semester ended. In an earlier post, I talked about Charles Taylor’s essay “Interpretation and The Science of Man.” I reference Taylor’s essay again to suggest that learning is a process of shaping your perspective through gradual nudges that are informed as much by practice, ritual, and mundane experience as reading and writing. Far more than a list of new facts I acquired, the majority of learning is an unconscious experience. It is often only after weeks away from the class that I realize that I think about things differently than I did before. But I think that is the evidence of real learning, that new knowledge becomes assumed and second-nature.

Already, I notice patterns of thought that were absent before this semester. I started listening to the novelist Anthony Doerr’s memoir Four Seasons in Rome, and I feel like I can detail each location from my memory. I think of the Villa Borghese or Campo de Fiori as concrete places where people live and speak, opposed to vaguely defined abstractions of a foreign European world.

This experience has made me appreciate the power of rooting knowledge in local experience. There are things in Rome that no words can fully explain, not because they are so beautiful that they are beyond words but because they are so complex and so much of the in-person experience is subliminal; you do not realize how much you take in. 

My elevation of experiential learning is ironic, given how we spent the second half of our semester each in our respective homes. But weeks or months of self-quarantining offers its own particular learning experience. The etiquette of Zoom calls–muting and unmuting, the frequent head-nod and thumbs-up–have become second-nature. The lessons I learned in Italy about adapting to a foreign culture are also applicable in the United States, where everyone is adapting to new norms and the creation of new online cultural mores. 

The CRP Rome Workshop's First Day of Class Online
The CRP Rome Workshop’s First Day of Class Online

This experience has also made me aware of how technology is almost omnisciently mediating our knowledge of the city. In the era of social distancing, our team depended on shared files on Google Drive and Powerpoint to collaborate on our project to share and critique each other’s view of the city. But we also used these methods while we were in Rome. The mix of physical interaction and technological mediation made the technology feel invisible or appear like an accessory. However, the COVID-19 pandemic made me realize how pervasive it is despite this illusion.

The philosopher and media theorist at NYU, Tom de Zengotita describes the shock of moving from mediated to unmediated experience:

Suppose your car breaks down in the middle of Saskatchewan, and you’ve got no gear, you’ve got no cellphone, you’ve got nothing to read, there’s nobody on the road, so you just sit there for three or four hours. This actually happened to me. What you notice after a while is the way in which everything around you is utterly indifferent to you. It’s not there for you. Every arrangement is accidental. Nothing is presented. You see what you happen to see. It’s indifferent to your view of it. It’s not for you!

Whereas in a mediated world, everything, including street signs, everything is for you. It’s addressing you.

The complete reliance on technology for interaction now, only makes its already constant presence appear more clearly. We used google maps to reference our perception of Prenestino when we could not be there ourselves. Yet I also depended on google maps wherever I walked from Rome to Urbino, to Venice.

I do not know if the whole technologically mediated view of the city is a net positive or a net negative. Our reflexive exercise with the cognitive maps helped to root our perception of the city in our grounded subjective experience. However, the influence of the satellite view is still evident in our maps of Prenestino. It is inescapable. Moreover, without this technology, we would not have been able to complete our study from afar.

Cognitive Map of Prenestino by Helena Park
Cognitive Map of Prenestino by Helena Park
Google Maps Satellite Image of Prenestino
Google Maps Satellite Image of Prenestino

Nevertheless, I wonder if our study looks much different than it would have looked if we stayed in Italy the whole semester. How much did the technology we used, and our methodology really change? Aside from Zoom-based interactions for class and interviews, the basic strategy of our report– in-person physical analysis followed by online ISTAT demographic analysis–went as planned. Perhaps not much about learning has changed under our pandemic circumstances. But now I am much more aware of the way technology has always mediated my education.