As our students increasingly rely on digital tools for intellectual work, they appreciate opportunities to explore how those technologies shape their thinking. This talk examines a commonplace book assignment that helps students unpack their own cognitive processes and develop awareness of the relationship between those processes and technologies that interact with them.
I created this project for a literature course as a hands-on experiment with early modern “ways of knowing.” Students kept a commonplace book all quarter, then reflected on the experience. Their thoughtful introspection and self-analysis inspired me to adapt the project for other classes, where I often present it as a “field notebook” for collecting and examining specimens of language.
I require it to be on paper to foreground the tactile, embodied experience that offers a productive contrast with their usual reading and writing practices. Writing without a backspace key helps concretize for them how even basic tools influence attention, flow, revision, and output. They also have the freedom to ‘write outside the lines,’ using idea maps, fragments, illustrations, and other non-linear methods, letting them see the shape of their own thinking processes. Their reflections engage thoughtfully with what technologies enable, what they hinder or obscure, and what kinds of intellectual work flourish through slow, deliberate practice.
I will share insights from student reflections (shared anonymously with permission) and discussion/reflection prompts that encourage students to critically evaluate their relationship to emerging technologies that purport to hack the slow, recursive processes through which cognitive skills develop.
