Activity Spaces

	Children, on-line learning and authentic teaching skills in primary education
	Activity Spaces

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Activity Spaces

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Achieving the right perspective

There are many perspectives on how to conceive and consider the incorporation of ICT into class programs. In the course of this project the perspective on ICT has shifted between

ICT as useful devices and services to be made available to teachers and students in the classroom (see... technology)
ICT as tools and artefacts that mediate (teaching and learning) activities
ICT as the means to new or improved (classroom) practices (see... professional learning)

'Activity spaces' - a new perspective

It may be useful to bring together several of these perspectives into an underlying concept. For example, the notion of activity spaces is worth considering.

Types of activity spaces

Activities are undertaken in several different types of spaces:

personal, that is the thoughts, feelings, relationships, artefacts, domains... of each person
physical, eg, classrooms, houses, in the field, workshops, mechanical ...
social, eg, family, class, community, community of practice...
virtual, eg, the web, imagination, rational exchanges, fields of study, cultures, texts...
hybrid, that is, spaces that are made up of two or more of the above, eg, organisations, homes

Spaces have boundaries and dimensions

Boundaries are barriers, openings, the sites of connections and limitations. They define the requirements for being in the space. Thus beliefs, rules and other forms of policy impact on activity spaces. Activity spaces and activity systems may be, in a sense, interchangeable views of the same phenomena.

ICT and activity spaces

Clearly can ICT mediates activity in each of these activity spaces in one or more of several ways. ICT provides tools for

constructing and/or reconstructing activity spaces such as databases, spreadsheets, mindmaps and many other forms of texts, creating virtual communities
moving between spaces literally and/or by representational means
linking and sharing spaces
reshaping with technology
linking or moving content within/between spaces

People, ICT and activity spaces

A fundamental reason for people's engagement with ICT is to extend their personal spaces and link these to other spaces for the purposes of activity.

Possible Implications

In many schools (and other places) there can be serious mismatches between the activity spaces available and the activities being undertaken.

Perhaps one of the most significant implications of the above is that governance would consider ICT as a component of purposeful activities and thus situate it appropriately in the activity spaces being 'governed'. Thus selection and management ICT resources and services would take place as part of the creation and configuration (that is, design) of the activity spaces that best matched the intended purposeful activities.