Crook and Dymott (2005)

Crook and Dymott (2005) ICT and the literacy practices of student writing
Crook and Dymott adopt a different theoretical approach to learning and context and propose that writing and technology are mutually constitutive; the context is not one which is a ‘surround’, as discussed by Tolmie, but a part of the whole learning.
The current theoretical school of Activity Theory is a modern descendant of Vygotsky’s approach to learning, who suggested things are ‘done through’ (mediated by) cultural artefacts, such as language, manmade tools, socially categorizing and institutionalising. Cultural psychologists define learning as becoming expert in the use of these cultural artefacts and therefore learning is classified as a social activity (even if this involves reading in physical isolation, as the reading and text and the book are culturally determined). Vygotsky (1981) wrote that ‘by being included in the process of behavior, the tool [artefact] alters the entire flow and structure of mental functions’ (p. 137). This is taken further by those who see learning as participation, using artefacts, which are a fundamental part of the learning (‘distributed cognition’ where the team and artefacts work together). If this is the view, then situated learning is specifically dependent on the context (culture and artefacts) within which the setting is taking place (Rogoff, for example); our learning is dependent on the situation we are present in and the ‘way of doing things round here’, in a social world.
The seminal text in situated cognition was Brown, Collins and Duguid’s article in Educational Researcher (1989). The authors described an apprenticeship model of learning closely related to the work of Lave (1988) and the idea of ‘legitimate peripheral participation’. Socio-cultural theory does not focus on measuring learning with ICT in terms of what is in an individual’s head or in terms of learning outcomes. Instead the focus is on individuals-using-technology-in-settings (Crook, 1994). Learning is conceptualised as a social endeavour and qualitative research methodologies have been adopted to investigate this area because the focus of inquiry is on the processes of learning and on meaning making in social settings.
As much of the above is very relevant to the reading, this (from the H809 course text) has been included, with some adaptations.

Thoughts on the reading:
The five aspects of reading play very specific parts in describing the activity of writing, to ensure the reader can create a rich picture of the relationship between the technology and how the processes related to writing are carried out. I think it would be fair to say that I had not considered the different ways in which we use text on the screen as opposed to text on a page. The issue of ‘…pages …could be turned without distracting visual attention from reading…’ (p102) is very relevant and may be an insight as to the difficulty I have in ‘screen reading’; there are too many potential distractions and the ease of moving to other tasks is not one which necessarily supports a physical book reading task. The other issue I considered of high importance was in relation to the socialising aspect of using the PC; the use of technology in collaborative activity, but, interestingly, not as in creating essays collaboratively. Perhaps this is still an ‘in the head’ task, whether through exam, personal task or within the classroom context. Overall, the five faces of writing as stated here offer opportunities to develop ideas of writing as a shared, culture-based activity; activity theory that is technologically driven?
The different aspects will necessarily have an ‘effect’ on the writing; this may be to some extent linked with the skills of the learner and the range of tools (technological artefacts) that the individual engages with. The processes carried out, however, may not ‘constitute’ writing; this will depend on the end product and if the text is formatted in a coherent and logical fashion (as dictated by the cultural setting, perhaps?). It appears that, while the information gathering tasks can be viewed as situated, possibly collaborative (distributive, if consensus agreed?), the actual writing is a task carried out ‘from the head’ to the ‘paper’. As students used the resources in such diverse ways, we should firstly ask what learning it is that we are considering? Is it the production of a piece of work or is it learning the cultural construction of this (a ‘learning to learn’ task)? The assignment produced will be mediated through a selected range of artefacts; the prescribed marking scheme for this piece of work may dictate that some marks are achieved by specifically referring to use of some of these or using these explicitly (for example, on line research references or a document formatting expectation), so in this sense the learning is mediated. If I was to assess (I am assuming ‘mark’ and not ‘assess for research’?) some of the students’ assignments described in this chapter, I would be guided by what the assessment criteria was, so necessarily on the end product and not the process.