Whilst embracing 'Activity Theory' I cannot always use the argument lucidly.
Engestrom presents an idea of how people or communities/groups communicate and learn from each other; when two people start to agree with gushing enthusiasm I'd worry, something else is going on.
(Power play of some kind, or love?)
[These ideas developed further here 'My Mind Bursts']
It is the very act of coming from a different stance that we as individuals begin to form ideas that are in effect beyond our current understanding, and when these 'objects' of understanding collide fresh thinking for both parties occurs.
There is a reason why in advertising (still I hope) a copywriter sits with an art director; this is how ideas form. Sitting in with 'creatives' and becoming one myself I came to appreciate this partnership ... though it has taken me 30 years to understand what is going in.
It has taken the last year with The OU to have my own thinking turned inside out, to let go, to share, to collaborate, rather than try to be that lone author in a garret, hunched shoulders over my work, never sharing it and rarely letting go.
What I have always needed and thrive on are collaborators in the form of agents, producers, editors, publishers, fellow writers and directors, colleagues who facilitate and enable, fellow bloggers too ...
If a blogger blogs, what do you do if you are forever engaged in other social media such as Linkedin or Facebook?
'e-Commentator' already feels like a naff 'noughties' way to express it.
We've had our fill of 'e-tivities' and 'e-learning' haven't we? It is just learning; they are just activities.
I've return to Engestrom often.
My ability to trace my love hate acceptance path through his thinking attests to the value of doing this, my 'learning journal'.
This is what initially had me befuddled and angry:
Two people are the easy part.
The interplay between SIX people because yet more complex.
At arm's length, the objects, the ideas, views or knowledge that they have begins to take on an identity of its own.
'Expansive learning is based on Vygotsky, though three times removed; it implies that we learn within activity pockets as individuals and groups. The interplay between these groups are the consequential objects of learning that in turn transmogrify in the presence of other objects. Solving problems, dealing with contradictions, may come about as these learning systems slide or shift'. Vernon (2011)
Am allowed to do that? Quote myself? It is my 'object 3' moment when it comes to this.
Anyone care to comment?
The challenge when reading papers such as those below is how to make the subject matter comprehensible to the non-academic. Some turn to diagrams, others to metaphors, yet others to cartoons.
I favour the lone speaker free of PowerPoint or even FlipChart.
If they can hold their argument and look into your eyes their conviction can be convincing.
My goal must remain making the complex comprehensible. Academics have a tendency to tie themselves in knots. If they only talk to fellow academics no wonder. I recognise the value of visualising, of animated explanation, of the power of persuasive through discourse, of metaphors, and analogies, of ideas rising out of the confusion to present themselves.
The problem with all things WWW is that it is just trillions of binary Ones and Zeros in the cloud (which is why I like to use the water-cycle as an analogy).
REFERENCE
Engeström (2001) article, Expansive learning at work: toward an activity theoretical reconceptualisation