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In addition to students’ navigation literacy and preference for interactive and discovery-based learning, today’s digital tools have also helped students develop an ability to make reasoned judgments based on a plethora of resources. The process used by Erik to create his science presentation illustrates this third cognitive-connectedness construct. First, Erik opened a word-processing program to take notes on the information that he gleaned from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory Website. With this word-processing window still open, he surfed the Internet to locate the video of a boy chopping down a tree, and the MP3 sound of running water. He downloaded these files to his desktop, making notes in his word-processing document about how he might use these downloads in the final presentation. He then opened a second word-processing document and composed a script. With his script still visible, Erik opened a sound-editing program and recorded his narration using his computer’s built-in microphone. Erik then saved the script’s soundtrack as a Quicktime file and imported it into iMovie. Next, he imported his previously recorded Garage Band music track, his video, and his images into his iMovie. Finally, he sequenced his video and images to fit with his narration. As the process Erik used to create his science project shows, an “enhanced peripheral reach increases our knowledge and so our ability to act without increasing information overload” (Weiser & Brown, 1995, ¶13). This ability to have an increased peripheral reach without experiencing information overload allows students to make reasoned judgments utilizing an array of resources.

Trying to make use of such an extended knowledge base overwhelms many adults. K-12 students, however, seem to thrive on it. Tapscott’s research (1998) led him to conclude that “N-Gen children are born with technology, they assimilate it. Adults must accommodate – a different and much more difficult learning process. With assimilation, kids view technology as just another part of their environment” (p. 40). Today’s students must focus on the most salient data in their extended knowledge base in order to make informed decisions about what information they will assimilate, what information they will store, and what they will choose to ignore. A scene from a typical MMPOG (massive multiplayer online game) provides a good example of students’ ability to make these kinds of reasoned judgments within digital spaces. A good MMPOG player learns to swap the periphery of the game for the center, and then back again, when necessary. The center of a game screen might show a player’s character, acting in concert with other members of his guild, as they attack an over-sized monster. A novice player focuses on his character, and the best way to use his limited resources to inflict lethal blows. A skilled player, however, swaps the periphery for the center, noticing at the edge of the screen how players are bartering for magical swards, avatars, and other objects of play in order to mount a more cooperative strategy to defeat their common foe. “The real game…is deeply social…. The real action…lies in the new kind of nonlinear, multiauthored narrative being constructed collectively by the players” (Brown & Gray, 2003, ¶ 26).

The affordances of today’s technologies, the ways students interact with and are changed by their digital worlds, have fostered the development of a cognitive-connectedness schema. This cognitive-connectedness schema includes the constructs of navigation literacy, a preference for interactive and discovery-based learning, and an ability to make reasoned judgments based on a vast array of resources.