Task 10 NIE - Activity theory in real

Visualizing the activity theory is the best way to draw similar views for 2 courses to compare them. I take Engestrom triangle as the source for my analysis, and build New Interactive Environment course and PLENK on this one.

PLENK2010

PLENK2010 visualization according Activity theory

Subjects: Participants 
Object: According the homepage of PLENK2010 The purpose of this course will be to clarify and substantiate, from the context of this new research, the concepts of personal learning environments and networks. Course facilitators and participants will analyze the research literature and evaluate it against their own experience with the intent of developing a comprehensive understanding of personal learning environments and networks.
Rules: Signing up, course activities, privacy policy
Instruments: live sessions, course content, wiki, personal learning environment, daily newsletter, RSS feed, SM tools - Twitter, blogs, Moodle, Delicious, other possible SM tools according the flow and need in the course.
Community: guest speakers, students, teachers, 
Effort: students, 


New interactive environments

New Interactive Environments visualized
according Activity theory

Subjects are students who participate in this course.

Object  is the curriculum of New Interactive Environment. It says: Participants acquire conceptual knowledge and procedural skills on how to analyse, represent, and (re-)instrumentalise human activities and activity systems with networked tools and services. 

Rules are the tasks, and deadlines that are listed by the teachers. But also the means how to fill the tasks are aprt of rules here - for example that tasks has to be done for certain deadline by certain ways - in blogs.

Instruments (artefacts) - there are several instrumenrs used in this course. Several are software tools that students use to do their homework and fill tasks - both online and offline tools. One of the most important instrument is the blog where students show their tasks and the course blog where new tasks are being published.
NIE wiki

Community in this NIE course can be taken as small group of people who participate in this course, but I would also consider it in a broader way, as community that affects the learned subject is much bigger. I would also take the whole IMKE department and Tallinn University in this community. As tasks are published through blogs then anonymous blogosphere is also part of the community in here.

Effort - students are the ones who fill the tasks in here. But we should't forget teachers who come up with tasks as well. Students couldn't do their tasks if someone wouldn't list them.


Comparison of NIE and PLENK2010 courses according Activity theory


Both of the courses are online courses, it makes them quite similar from Activity theory perspective as well. 
Both courses use several social media and digital media tools as part of the course and tasks are being shown by menas of these tools. Students are subjects and community in both courses and teachers are the ones who give tasks
Both courses are also similar by overall way of course building, not all tasks or deadlines are given before the course, but considering the flow and ways how course goes new tasks and deadlines are given.

As I understand the students in PLENK2010 course are not necessarily students from thabasca University and the University of Prince Edward Island but can be anyone who are interested, this is the main difference with NIE as students in NIE are  Tallinn University students who chose to take the course and get graded for what they do in NIE.

In PLENK2010 there are also guest lecturers and everybody are expected to listen to them. 

Also tools like Twitter and blogsa re expected to be used not only to fill the tasks, but to talk about the thoughts that participatns come up with and tag them with #PLENK2010


Students/participants are important in both courses, they are subjects, they are the ones who use all the tools, they are the ones who are "labor" for the course, and at the same time influence the course overall doings through communication and thoughts.

Task 9 NIE - Activity theory

I will try to explain what Activity theory is for me. I could list some definitions from researchers, psychologists or AI analysts, but I think it would be much more useful to try to explain it in my own words, after I have read several articles and used Google search to find out more where and how Activity theory is used.

Reaching the goal by Activity theory. Leontjev

Historically activity theory started in the beginning of 20th century in Russia. Today one of the most important activity theory centers is in Helsinki. A lot of different researches come from there. Most of them are from IT fields, where human action and computer (mediated) actions are analysed.

While Pavlov explained a lot of animal behavior through instincts, then it couldn't explain everything. Võgotsky and Leontjev took pavlov's instincts based theory further and it started activity theory. The idea is, animals and people do things because we plan and know we need or have to to get something else - for example fulfill our needs. When we talk about only humans then activity theory is based on knowingly doing things, taking and handling the reality, which has also been called activity.

In psychology Activity theory is important in learning theories. This is what it's taken to IT fields as well - it's important to understand how people learn, to be able to make some AI learn from it's activities. By activity theory learning is done through the actions that form a system and make sensible organizational base. Later we can use learned things to decide what to do, or act in a certain way. Activity theory is continuos, everything can change based on new experience and actions that are done.


* this overview is written based on different articles, wikipedia and definitions.

Task 8 - from personal media to influencing masses

For long media channels have filtered news and information for audience, so that audience gets what the media channel decides is important to share and forward. As now one person can influence and have audience by himself, professional media channels are challenged to know more and explain why some news are shared and others are not. At the same time these media channels get quick feedback that either praises them for shared information or blames for leaving something behind.

Before the communication was one-sided, people got what they wanted. This week I heard a American talking about his high school time in the beginning of 80's when they also had only 3 TV channels to choose from compared to hundreds they have now. All these TV channels have to compete of having bigger audiences. And if during 80's a channel could easily have 80 million people watching a show, then today it's already good if they have 1 million, the drop has been enormous. At the same time, all these channels get feedback from their audience and have to rely on it. Even more and more they are using real-live shows. It's cheap, but from the other side its direct communication of the audience. The audience is who decides what is going to happen and participants are among the same audience.

This we already know that privately held blogs might grow even bigger than official media channels or newspapers online versions. These people who manage their personal blogs usually are not professional journalists. They just care about a topic so much that they want to talk about it, and if there is enough readers, who read it and share it, comment blog posts and it's searchable through search engines - it will get into masses.

Lüders wrote in his article "Internet works within all of society's social systems, increasing levels of self-reflection." There is nothing new in her statement. Internet is generally cheap, it can be used with cheaper technical tools and it's accessible by most society classes.

For me talking about the possibilities that Internet provides usually seems even totally common thing. So it has changed the way we communicate or perceive information. Mass media is not the the same mass media we knew 20 years ago. I am more interested in how people use these new ways they have and if and how it has changed a person or groups? I think people more and more understand how much influence they might have. There has always been the desire to influence, but now people have the tools they didn't have before. We already have some really good examples of how Internet has helped to start non-violent revolution (through Facebook in Latin-America). It wasn't done deliberately, but it happened, because so many people with same thoughts saw the outcall and new they were not alone with their thoughts and it gave them safety feeling.

So I am thinking what more is there to come, how much individuals knowlingly use the mediums and tools they now have?

Task 7 - interactivity, from my point of view

Interactive webpage

When I talk about interactive webpage, then I mean a webpage where user can contribute for example in writing something that other users can read and give their opinions or thoughts on. Simplest is probably an internet forum where somene can start a thread and others will continue to discuss about the topic they are interested and have information on.

But often a question is asked “how to make a website more interactive?”. 

Then people don’t really mean only technical possibilities but also the overall feeling - usability and accessibility are also part of discussion now. 
For me interaction is basically communication where all parties can give their input. Therefore TV series aren’t but for example TV shows where watchers can vote for singers they like the most, already is. 

Interactive for all

The two articles we read for Task 5 and Task 6 made me think that interactivity is not the same concept for all the people but it depends on the research field for example and from one's perspective and feeling.

I am interested in groups - from the research field side. I like to think how roups are formed online for example, if the same human groups and “interaction” can give a person what is comparable from a reallife experience. IN these group discussions interaction an communication is also important. And from here I could try to define what interaction is for me and how it differs from communication.

Inter should mean between someone and action, doing something. Putting these things together means that there are different sides who are doing something that influences both sides. Communication is probably part of interaction, althought it might ssometimes seem like a broader term. While communication is for example the email that we send to a friend, then interaction is “sending email, reading the email, thinking of replying to it or not replying”. All this is interaction it contains different parts and all details are important. Having a discussion about dogs is communication but also interaction, the overall bubble around saying words, looking in the eyes, being ready for answering and being influenced by the other side for wanting, needing or being told to participate.

Dance interactive

While I was looking for information, some interesting articles or pages that would talk about interactivity I came across Dance Interactive. It's a page that selles 6 different videos for teaching the exact movement of dance motions. 

The reason why I found it was I started to think how much dancing is interactive.  Of course it is! It's built on communication, feeling, answering actions and getting the "touch" that makes to want to continue. 

Technical tools help to give dancing videos something different, so that it's not only about people who dance, but the show itself is based on the movement of actor. 

WII game is one of the best examples of interactiv dancing with technical support.

Interactivity is subjective term. There is no correct answer that would fit for everyone.