L.S. Vygotsky and the Digit

The article ponders, if it is at all possible to include digital technologies into the process of mediation. The latter being the core of cultural-historical psychology by L. Vygotsky. In order to facilitate the discussion, the author outlines the nature of the virtual world, made by digital technologies. It was postulated by a number of researchers that digital technology could serve both as a tool and as a sing. And so — it can be part of the mediation practices. This article claims that digital technologies create a unique environment (virtual reality) that dictates particular ways of conduct, especially for children and teenagers. The author demonstrates how digital technology creates splinter segments in the mediation process, which makes an adult to leave the communication with a child. Which leads to so-called digital chasm, and a child descends into the virtual reality without living through the mediation process. This is why we claim that digital technology can’t serve as a sign, the way Vygotsky describes them. The article lists parameters and consequences of the digital schism, such as: event shift, narrative intervention, inversion of functions and flattening of the horizon of meaning. The article proposes a solution — a construction of a search scenario in schools. This search scenario consists of several stages: challenge, analysis, ask-search, discussion, reflection and articulation of knowledge. Each of these stages can include digital technologies in various ways. The article concludes the algorithmic nature of modern schools makes a pupil’s behaviour “digital” before digital technologies themselves. And so, in order to overcome the digital schism, one needs to establish search scenarios as a teaching model before introducing digital technologies during a lesson

Emerging technologies · Epistemology · Mediation · Political science · Politics · Schism · Social science · Sociology · Computer Science · Educational Methods and Teacher Development · Law · Psychology of Development and Education · Sociopolitical Dynamics in Russia

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