• 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 representations preconceived by others .
• Cognitive tools can be used to support the deep reflective thinking that is necessary for meaningful learning .
• Cognitive tools have two kinds of important cognitive effects , those which are with the technology in terms of intellectual partnerships and those that are of the technology in terms of the cognitive residue that remains after the 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 will be situated in realistic contexts with results that are personally meaningful for learners .
Multimedia as a Cognitive Tool
Space does not allow full revelation of the effectiveness of a wide range of cognitive tools , and therefore this report focuses on multimedia construction programs as intellectual partners to enable and facilitate critical thinking and higher order learning . Although there are many different types of computer-based cognitive tools , including databases , spreadsheets , semantic networks , expert systems , multimedia / hypermedia construction software , computer-based conferencing , collaborative knowledge construction environments , computer programming languages , microworlds , and interactive learning environments ( Jonassen , 1996a ), multimedia construction software programs such as HyperStudio ( Milton & Spradley , 1996 ) are tools increasingly available in K-12 schools , and therefore deserve special attention .
Multimedia is the integration of more than one medium into some form of communication or experience delivered via a computer . Most often , multimedia refers to the integration of media such as text , sound , graphics , animation , video , imaging , and spatial modeling into a computer system ( von Wodtke , 1993 ). Employing relatively inexpensive desktop computers , users are now able to capture sounds and video , manipulate audio and images to achieve special effects , synthesize audio and video , create sophisticated graphics including animation , and integrate them all into a single multimedia presentation . Individuals with very little experience are becoming their own multimedia artists , producers , and publishers . Multimedia presentations are engaging because they are multimodal . In other words , multimedia can stimulate more than one sense at a time , and in doing so , may be more attention-getting and attention-holding .
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