ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the ways in which interaction with ICTs in the classroom can lead to novel and sometime unplanned outcomes. In so doing it draws together ideas from human computer interaction (HCI) theory, and focuses on the critical and often overlooked relationship between the designer and the user through the concept of instrumentation. From this perspective learning and technology are viewed as part of a rich fabric of relationships between people, technologies, institutions, tools and practices of all kinds. Here learning through interaction can be thought of as a form of mediated communication where the tool or artefact is structured so it can be both understood and then appropriated by students in particular ways. These ideas are explored through a concrete classroom case in which primary school students are using simulation software to learn science. In summary, the chapter:
• highlights how theoretical perspectives can help to probe more deeply into classrooms and thereby reinterpret uses of both new and old technologies for learning;
• introduces the idea of instrumentation that explains how learning is always distributed in some form between the technology, the learner and the social and cultural context and there is nothing inherent in technology that automatically guarantees learning;
• emphasises the importance of a variety of interactions that operate during learning.
