Applying technology in a classroom consists of understanding what is needed for your students as the teacher and understanding how to enhance each topic with the use of technology. According to a reading that was done in class, “distributive cognition can be defined as a way to understand how people interact with their environment and how they can be enabled by the environment to undertake highly complex tasks that would usually be beyond the abilities of the unassisted individual” (Morgan 127). Distributed cognition can be used in each and every classroom to allow the use of external resources that are available for the students to expand their learning. For myself, distributed cognition is the engagement of the students with the use of tools that teachers can apply to allow students to experience great learning. 

Since I am working towards graduating with a degree in Early Childhood Education, I decided to watch Mrs. Zurawic who is a pre-kindergarten teacher from Ravenswood Elementary School. She wanted to expand her students learning about topics that were not in the curriculum. To do so, Mrs. Zurawic implemented morning research groups. Through her lesson, technology was recently introduced in small groups. 

After observing a lesson in early childhood classroom, the teacher was able to incorporate many different types of technologies in her lesson. To begin, she noticed that her students were interested in learning about topics that were not in their curriculum. Mrs. Zurawic wanted to tap into those interests of her students, so she made the change to come up with an idea to have small research groups presented in the morning. For example, topics for this week included learning about cats, dogs, and alligators. To break up the research on these topics Mrs. Zurawic has her students work on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays in small groups and on Fridays they go “public.” To go public is when the class shares with one another what they have learned throughout the week. To add to this new idea and expand on student learning the teacher decided to bring in videotaping and the  Ipads to take pictures and make that images into a story. For example, having different pictures of what a cat tale may look like, this shows how the cat is feeling. This element helps the students to take what they learned in the class and apply it to things at home, in school, and outside to make connections between classroom learning and the outside world. 

These technologies that she integrated into her lesson plan consisted of small groups using books, pencil and paper, and iPads for the students. With the books, students would have a certain research group that they were a part of and research about different facts that they would share out with the entire class on Friday’s. To expand on finding information and writing it down, Mrs. Zurawic decided that as the teacher students could benefit using the iPads to take pictures or even out a digital story together about their animals. Mrs. Zurawic would work with each group of students and show them some type of example about their animal. For example, she showed the cat research group how students can tell the cat’s mood, simply based on how their tail looks. Mrs. Zurawic is there to provide immediate feedback for the student’s. This is an aspect that Martin talked about called monitoring. Monitoring refers to the function of assessing the quality of the coordination between systems and providing this information as feedback. Since students in this class are just getting used to technology in their education, the teacher is there to monitor and provide feedback for the options that are given to the students. 

In the article Intelligence and Technology, it talked about the effects of, with and through technology. In this lesson there are effects of and effects with technology that were present in this lesson. According to Salomon, “effects of technology is how using a technology may leave cognitive residues that enhance performance even without technology” (Salomon 72). The  effects of technology that were present in this lesson offers the teacher to scaffold what her students are learning. For example, in this lesson Mrs. Zurawic wanted to take a topic that her students were interested in (cats, dogs, and alligators), and expand the students’ knowledge. To reach this goal, Mrs. Zurawic split  up her students in different research groups based on their preferences. From there she mapped out days of the week that allowed her students to look up information in books or magazines about their animals. She noticed that her students were doing so well with this and she wanted to expand their learning with the use of technology and begin introducing the Ipads. Mrs. Zurawic stated that the use of Ipads allowed her students to have a variety of techniques available for research and to move her students toward a stronger understanding on the different types of animals in their research groups that they would be sharing with each other by the end of the week. 

While the effects with technology, is how the use of technology often enhances intellectual performance. These provide the teacher and her students with many different affordances. With technologies like a  pencil, a book, or an Ipad, students are able to use these resources to apply what they already know with what they are trying to find out. Some may think that technologies are just devices like computers or Ipads. However, a book can be just as useful as the digital technologies that exist in the classrooms today.  In our current lives we use books for research and using Ipads because there is so much information out there. Research means that you look at so many different sources, this in turn assists the students to make the connection that there are multiple ways to find one answer. This offers the students the beginning stages of how and why they found their answers. With technology students are able to gain the knowledge of finding the correct information, whether that comes from a book, on a computer or a combination of the two.   

The next topic that is important to talk about is the idea of translation and representation of ideas. The function of translation refers to the transformation of information from one representational system to another. Or as I define it as, choosing the right ideas one way and then another way. In the lesson plan that I observed, Mrs. Zurawic took one type of information, the books on animals and used  another type, iPads with pictures of cats which show the students that each method is equally as helpful when using these tools during the lesson. She was able to allow the students to take the iPads and turn their research into a story of even a movie. The iPads act as a learning tool for these young students to begin working with technology. This shows that no matter the platform that was used in the lesson the representation of ideas can be seen in different viewpoints, all reaching the type of information. 

Overall, technology itself is a translation and it helps to represent ideas that Mrs. Zurawic wanted to portray her lesson of research groups. She can translate her ideas of completing research into interactive activities that allow students to apply their knowledge. I think that this lesson and the use of technology within this lesson was integrated to make the students overall smarter. The students although they are just starting out, they are getting a chance to explore new modes of learning. The iPads that were used in this lesson expands each student’s cognitive abilities. Therefore it can be said that working with these technologies smarter and has the potential to lead to a better overall performance. When you are able to see all the affordances of  technologies that are used in the lesson, you are able to understand how technology can be used to make someone smarter and enhance their knowledge.