Identifying the Information Architectures of Existing and Emerging Technologies: Toward an Affordance Analysis of Technologies for Teaching & Learning in Teacher Education
Abstract: The purpose of this roundtable session is to identify affordances that digital technologies provide for the enactment and reshaping of teaching and learning in teacher education. By analyzing professional literature across the fields of information architecture, graphic design, cognitive science, explanation design, information visualization, human-computer interaction, and information design, we identify at least ten promising affordances: multimodality, simultaneity, comparability, zoomability, persistence, immersiveness, searchability, filterability, layerability, and communication. Simultaneity, for instance, permits teacher educators and preservice teachers to see all the assets on a wall screen as small multiples (i.e., thumbnails) within one eye-span (i.e., a single gaze), thereby reducing the carry-forward load on working memory and facilitating gap-filling inferences. Analyzing these affordances raises a number of questions for technology-oriented teacher education research and theory and begins to sketch the outline of a conceptual framework for new thinking about the teaching-infrastructural factors that afford/constrain teacher education in specific ways and facilitate/impede the emergence and development of particular types of learning-to-teach ability. This roundtable session will permit participants to engage in lively and deep discussion about the ten affordances we propose--as well as others raised during the conversation.