Community Contribution #4

What does technology bring to our attention, and what does it keep out of view? How might that shape what we learn from our PLN? 

After this week’s readings and videos, I couldn’t help but make a connection between AI and affordances. I think that using AI tools like ChatGPT in one’s Personal Learning Network makes the impossible possible in the digital world. AI provides explicit visual signifiers, such as a simple prompt box with a submit button. These signifiers indicate perceivable affordances that provide answers, summaries, and direct explanations with the click of a button. These specific design cues bring this immediate generation of information right before my eyes, which makes everything effortless. I don’t have to make numerous Google searches; I can search for something once and get summaries upon summaries of information. 

On the other hand, what AI highlights keeps all the deeper cognitive work hidden and out of view. As Tony Fadell points out in his TedTalk, “As human beings, we get used to everyday things really fast”. Because we habituate to seamless tools so quickly, we stop noticing how their design choices guide our behaviour. I think it is deeply rooted in human evolution to use tools to adapt. However, when we rely on AI to synthesize ideas or outline a topic, we engage in cognitive offloading. We are delegating analytical thinking to an external system, not just our memory storage. In this system, we focus solely on typing prompts rather than doing the internal mental heavy lifting. 

I think this dynamic is actively altering how we all learn from our PLNs. Reading an AI’s polished response can create an inflated metacognitive confidence, where having an answer generated in front of me blurs the line between what the tool “knows” and what I actually understand myself. Also, because the tool makes getting answers frictionless, it makes critical evaluation and memory retention of information extremely difficult, which slowly decays these vital skills over time. I believe that to build a successful PLN, we need to look beyond the convenience that AI provides and actively notice when we are offloading our learning. 

Fadell, Tony. The First Secret of Design Is … Noticing. 1433343543. www.ted.com, https://www.ted.com/talks/tony_fadell_the_first_secret_of_design_is_noticing. 

Risko, Evan F., and Sam J. Gilbert. “Cognitive Offloading.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences [England], vol. 20, no. 9, September 2016, pp. 676–88, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2016.07.002. 

“What Are Affordances? — Updated 2026.” IxDF – Interaction Design Foundation, 14 Oct. 2026, https://ixdf.org/literature/topics/affordances.