Image created by Dr Ahmet Durgungoz using ChatGPT
Digital education reading group: April 2025
In this month’s digital education reading group, Dr Ahmet Durgungoz invites us to slow down, step away from the headlines about generative AI and instead look at the bigger picture. Ahmet has sourced five rich and thought-provoking texts which explore the boundaries of cognition, media, and technology. These readings challenge us to rethink where the mind begins and ends, how media shape our learning environments, and what it means to think alongside digital tools and AI.
Let’s start by imagining ourselves thousands of years ago. Picture a woman living in a cave, having lost her family to a predator, a lion the tribe had never seen before. In a world without writing, signs, or even the concept of drawing, she picks up a burnt stick from the fire, a simple tool, and does something extraordinary. She presses it to the cave wall and begins to sketch. Not for art, but for survival. She draws the lion, its shape, its features, so others will recognise it. Then she draws poisonous plants to avoid, animals safe to hunt, and dangerous ones to escape. With that stick, she created the first learning resource, a tool that transfers knowledge across time. But now imagine this: generations later, her descendants are the only ones who understand how to use this medium. The markings remain, but their meaning begins to shift. What once protected now confuses.
Of course, this is my own imagined story; surely, things didn’t happen exactly this way. But it helps us reflect on a deeper truth: without tools to share and preserve knowledge, people would not survive. From cave drawings to hammers, fire, the wheel, the printing press, and now generative AI, every tool we’ve created has altered our trajectory as a species, fundamentally changing how we live, learn, and communicate.
This session invites us to reflect deeply on why we adopt or resist new tools and technologies and why understanding and embracing them may be critical to our very survival as learners, educators, and societies:
- Why do tools matter to human survival?
- How have they historically shaped learning and knowledge?
- What parallels can we draw between the cognitive value of cave drawings, hammers, and today’s generative AI tools?
- And ultimately, what does AI literacy mean when viewed not just as a digital skill, but as a new form of survival literacy?
Resources
These readings offer a blend of theoretical insight and contemporary relevance. We encourage you to engage with them before the session.
1. Clark, A., & Chalmers, D. (1998) The Extended Mind
Available in the online library
This seminal paper argues that cognition can extend beyond the brain to include external tools and environments, such as notebooks or digital devices, if they are functionally integrated with mental processes. Through thought experiments and real-world analogies, it challenges the assumption that the mind is bounded by the skull, offering a framework for thinking about learning and memory in digital contexts. (We will talk about Otto’s notebook)
2. McLuhan, M. (1964) The Medium is the Message from Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
McLuhan provocatively claims that the form of a medium, rather than its content, shapes human experience and social structures, illustrating this with examples from print, electric light, and television. His message invites educators to focus not just on what media communicate, but on how they reconfigure our perceptions, interactions, and learning environments.
3. Vygotsky, L. (1978) Tool and Symbol in Child Development, from Mind in Society
Vygotsky explores how human development is shaped by the integration of tools and language, arguing that speech plays a transformative role in enabling children to solve problems and organise thought. He contrasts this with animal intelligence, emphasising that uniquely human cognition arises through social interaction and cultural mediation.
4. Barandiaran, X.E., Pérez-Verdugo, M. (2025) Generative midtended cognition and Artificial Intelligence: thinging with thinging things
This paper introduces “generative midtended cognition,” a concept describing hybrid human-AI creative processes where generative AI systems become integral to human intentionality. The authors argue that such interactions transcend traditional extended cognition theories, proposing a new framework that captures the co-constitutive nature of human and AI agency in creative endeavors.
5. Carr, N (2008) Is Google Making Us Stupid?
Carr reflects on how digital technologies, particularly the internet, may be reshaping our brains, reducing our capacity for deep reading and sustained attention. Drawing on personal experience and neuroscience, he questions whether our increasing reliance on search engines might come at the cost of contemplative thought.
Key questions
To guide our discussion
1. In what ways does the medium we use to think and communicate, be it drawing, writing, or generative AI, change the nature of the message itself?
2. At what point does a tool like AI stop being an assistant and start becoming part of our thinking process?
3. How should educators respond to the increasing use of AI tools in learning, through regulation, integration, or transformation of teaching practices?
4. What are the implications of viewing generative AI as a cognitive extension rather than a threat to originality?
5. If AI literacy becomes a form of survival literacy, what are the risks of ignoring it?
Looking forward to a lively and thoughtful session. Feel free to get in touch if you need help accessing the materials!
List of topics discussed at previous meetings
