ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author discusses that the form of interaction is not the one that first comes to mind as being 'collaborative'. He describes one experience of his own involving the implementation of a primary school computer activity. The author considers longitudinal continuity: the creation of an integrating 'common knowledge' within a learning community. He identifies the role of social interaction in promoting the 'lateral continuity' of schooled achievements: helping the transfer between different situations of practice. The discussion of common knowledge indicates how human intersubjectivity may be regarded from two perspectives. On the one hand, it resides within the prompting, monitoring, intruding talk that makes up instruction-in-progress. On the other hand it resides in talk and action that serve to create that which becomes held in common. The author outlines a configuration of computers that goes some way towards avoiding the breakdown of community-based mutual knowledge–as it might otherwise occur in relation to computer work.
