«The dialogical use of technology in education: investigating its impact on key learning processes for society»
Manoli PifarréUniversitat de Lleida
Abstract
In some technological innovation environments, the term “Homo Connectus” (evolution of “Homo Sapiens”) has been coined as a metaphor that visualizes the impact that interactive technologies have on human behavior and cognition. This metaphor encapsulates the idea of individuals connected to one another, sharing and externalizing ideas in shared spaces and using multimodal channels. As a result of this active dialogue, mediated by technology, new knowledge emerges created collectively and collaboratively. In the educational field, the use of these interactive technological tools allows creating a dialogic space (Wegerif, 2007) that is interactive and tangible for all users and that supports the collective creation of knowledge. This dialogic space can simultaneously incorporate physical actions (through direct and visible manipulations for all users connected in the common work space), cognitive representations (through the construction of knowledge artifacts) and socio-emotional relationships ( through multimodal experiences) (Pifarré, 2019). Furthermore, this shared multifaceted dialogue space is co-constructed, simultaneously, using different modes of communication (oral, written, gestural) and with multiple symbolic languages (images, graphics, text). This conference will discuss how the promotion of these dialogic spaces, co-constructed in a multimodal way with the use of technology, have a positive impact on learning and the learning processes necessary in the digital society. In particular, it will show how collective creation and interaction around knowledge artifacts affect learning processes. These knowledge artifacts are dynamic, tangible, provisional and manipulable by all users and facilitate the collaborative understanding of complex concepts. Various examples taken from our studies and carried out in the school environment will be presented that will show these ideas in a more concrete way.
Bio
University professor in the area of Evolutionary and Educational Psychology. University of Lleida. Since 2010 she is an Honorary Research Fellow of the Graduate School of Education. University of Exeter (UK). In collaboration with internationally renowned researchers, she has published several articles in journals indexed in WOS-JCR and SCOPUS (Researcher ID: C-6865-2008. ORCID: 00002-4271-4824). She has carried out numerous long-term research stays at various international universities (Open University – UK; University of Exeter – UK; The Education University of Hong Kong; Knowledge Lab, University College of London). She has been an uninterrupted principal investigator in 5 national R + D + i projects, and has also led the participation of the UdL in several European projects (H2020 and Erasmus + KA2 and KA3). Since 2002, she has directed the consolidated research group «Cognition and Context mediated by Information and Communication Technologies» –COnTIC (www.contic.udl.cat). His research career has focused on the study of the use of technology to develop unique cognitive and social processes in Secondary Education, and in short, he has pursued a double objective, on the one hand, to achieve a high scientific quality in the field of study and, on the other hand, manage to transform the teaching / learning processes mediated by technology in secondary school. For this reason, part of her research has been carried out in secondary schools and she has collaborated closely and equally with teachers and students.
