Cyborgs, knowledge and credit for learning

If digital technology today makes children able to rely on external aids (pocket calculators, Google, etc.) in their learning, is it still necessary to teach traditional school knowledge (such as mental arithmetic, recall of facts)? In this chapter, the debate about extended cognition is approached from the perspective of education. It is asked whether a human–machine interaction constitutes good learning in an effort to distinguish between when a person truly comes to know something aided by technology and when they merely parrot or copy something from technology. The standard answer to this question is that the difference is made by how well the technology in question is integrated in one’s cognitive character. Instead, it is argued that the difference lies in one’s acquired facility with the technology in question—credit for what one comes to know using technology when one has learned to use that technology well enough.