Technology, Creativity, and Learning: Semiotic Perspective

Technology, Creativity, and Learning: Semiotic Perspective

Toufik Azzimani (Université Mohammed Premier, Morocco) and El Mehdi Kaddouri (Université Mohammed Premier, Morocco)
Copyright: © 2020 |Pages: 10
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-1492-4.ch006

Abstract

The concept of creativity is the expression of the tendency for man to overcome his limits and go beyond himself to invent new tools that are the technological and cultural extensions of his body. This creativity is often seen as innovation, technology, and learning. So why are technologies, creativity, and learning associated in the same proposal? Creativity and learning are basically processes of meaning, and technologies are places where sense is generated. Therefore, using a theory of meaning is necessary to understand the complexity of the relationships between technology, creativity, and learning. The authors will not take position with the ICTE as a practitioner or as a teacher concerned with improving learners' learning. They will try to take an external view at the notions of technology, creativity, and learning, starting from an analytical model that has the main concern to question the relationships between facts, objects, and concepts, and that puts into perspective the subject in a continuous quest for sense.
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Technologies

It is clear that technologies are not the preserve of modern times. Technologies have always directly or indirectly affected human's life style, perception and thought. But first, it is necessary to distinguish between techniques and technology.

From Techniques to Technology

Starting from both terms, technology is given as a discourse on techniques, as Dominique Bourg states:

There is no effect of humanity without technical objects or a permanent technical environment [...]. We then separated humanity itself as a technician in itself for later. The advent of scientific and industrial modernity is in no way affected by this state of affairs. (Bourg, 1996, p. 10)

The technique is thus the mechanism that allows new phenomena to take shape and appear for the subject.

I believe, following Bachelard, that technique gives consistency to beings of thought, concepts and ideas (Bachelard, (1934, [1967]). It makes them tangible and makes them the subject of a collateral experience, and therefore a learning object.

From Technology to Digital

The digital revolution does not stand out from this lot. It has even put technology at the heart of human existence.

As Pierre Lévy states, ” the digital revolution is not so much about appearances, or the observable, as the organizing system of our perceptions, our thoughts and our relations, their new mode of appearance ” (Vial, 2013). The digital revolution is not only a technical event, but an unprecedented intellectual event that continuously changes our perceptual structures and profoundly affects our interpretation and understanding of reality.

Indeed, techniques are not only tools, they are structures of perception. They condition the way the world appears to us and the phenomena are given to us. For nearly half a century, digital technologies have brought us perceptions of an unknown world. These beings that emerge from our screens and interfaces overturn our idea of what is real and teach us to perceive again. »

The digital revolution has also affected our perception structures. As a result, it indirectly affects creative potential. To the extent that creativity is conceived in this context as a change in perception and attitude.

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