This article that we had to read for tonight’s discussion was very interesting indeed. Not only interesting, but practical as well. The author of this article touches on a subject that we, as educators, must use on a daily basis….representation. Specifically, he touches on the power of effective representation and the lack of power when effective representation is not used. The author has one main point in the reading and that is that it is very important to match the representation used with the educational task at hand. He does this through the use of numerous examples and displays both effective representation and ineffective or deleterious representation for education or learning purposes.

Cognitive artifacts are defined by the author as: "marks or symbols that represent something else and then we are able to do our reasoning by those marks". These cognitive artifacts are important because they are concrete items that are used that help us understand deeper or hidden meanings. Norman states that these cognitive artifacts can be either experiential, or reflective. Experiential artifacts provide ways to experience and act upon the world, whereas reflective artifacts provide ways to modify and act upon representations. For example, an experiential artifact would be a telescope that gives us information that is very distant in space, and a reflective artifact would be that of writing down airplane itineraries and then having the user determining how long each flight will take in actual airtime. The author spends a considerable amount of time reflecting on this reflection.

Proper choice of cognitive artifacts is the point that the author reiterates many times in this article. The most striking example for me, maybe because I am a health care professional, was the example that the author gave with regards to medical prescriptions. The author shared research in which it has been shown in many surveys that multi-medicated patients have a 10-30% error rate in taking medications and it is mainly due to the way medication prescriptions are written. In this case, the author states that the cognitive artifact that the MD uses to write the prescription is not from a patient’s point of view but only from a physician’s viewpoint. So, the representation that is used is incorrect for the task that needs to be completed; that of making sure that the patient is compliant in taking his/her medications. A researcher by the name of Day, in 1988, wrote on this topic and came upon a much more effective representation for MD prescriptions that would be more user-friendly. The columnar and row method that he uses for the multi-medicated patient is much easier to follow then the MD’s written order, or even the pillbox method. Another example that the author gives is that of the laborious nature of adding Arabic numbers together in comparison to adding Roman numerals. The cognitive artifacts with the Roman numerals are, in some instances easier to use, than the adopted Arabic system that we use in our educational system.

The author concludes by stating that experiential cognition is enhanced when the principle of naturalness of perception is followed. That is, cognition is enhanced "if the properties of the representation match the properties of the thing being represented". For example, tally marks are still in use today because they are a good way to represent an increasing size of number. By making hash marks, one is able to add to a number just by making a mark and not be forced to change the whole number to another whole number. Also, tally marks can easily be seen by sheer number of marks (almost like a bar graph) which number is larger.

Let’s reflect on a few questions from this reading:

1. How do we know if the representations that we use in educating are the correct cognitive artifacts?
2. Do our textbooks that we use in teaching limit teaching or learning ability just because the student’s are too bound to the written word?
3. How important is it as educators to put ourselves in the "student’s shoes" and those that are learning new material for the first time?
4. Is there some educational value in purposely not matching a representation to the task that needs to be completed?
5. Last, but not least, who was Phaedrus and was he just Socrates’ yes man?

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