Knowing Practice : A More Complex View of New Media Literacy

-In this paper, I examine the pervasive quest for invisible computers, applications, and interfaces in order to make a case for resisting the pressure to standardize platforms for delivering on-line courses and other Web-based applications. We need to be especially wary of the argument that the ideal information resource or technology imposes no cognitive load on its users. Although usability experts like Jakob Nielsen present a cogent case for routinizing, for example, the colors of visited and unvisited links in HTML documents, such a strategy may fail to provide the cognitive scaffolding knowledge workers will need to confront changing technological environments in productive ways. In other words, too great a reduction of the cognitive challenge in the present may prevent people from developing effective learning strategies they can apply to future technologies. Drawing on constructivist theories of learning, I argue that applications and interfaces must remain visible and accessible to knowledge workers if they are to develop new