SoMobNet roundtable, London, 21 Nov. 2011http://www.somobnet.eu/roundtable/

The Interweaved Fabrics of Reality

Making sense of material, social and intentional space, patterned practices, and the implications for m-learning design

Yishay Mor, IET, Open University

Merchant / Crook (this morning)

Schooling = participation in a set of patterned practices (not necessarily about effective learning)

Do we need to burn down schools to change this set? (campsmount)

(techno-pedagogical) Design…Christopher Alexander: “The process of inventing physical things

which display new physical order, organization, form, in response to function” (1964, p.1).

Middleton et al.: “a subtle but complex interaction between the designer and contextual constraints … proposing the form of an artifact, system or process, which in turn drives its behaviour, which in turn can be compared with its desired function” (2008, p. 22).

Herbert Simon: “everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into desired ones” (1969, p 129).

Design…

Devise artefacts through which we can act on reality in desirable ways.

- Contextualised- Functional- Reality: as we understand it. Ideas, not atoms.

Making sense of reality

Bruner (1991): we create and share meanings by constructing narratives from our experiences.

Narrative = • Context• Protagonist(s)• Sequence of events. – temporal links suggesting causality

• Implicit moral

HomeBedroom Bed

Clock

Corridor

Kids’ roomStairs

Kitchen

Bread machine

Me

Wife Son

Daughter

Friends

FootballTeam

School

Work

Work

Friends

Colleagues

Colleagues

Friends

Me

WifeSon

Get to SchoolOn time

Get to WorkOn time

MakeSandwiches

PrepareTalk

Material

Social

Intentional

Culture?

• School uniform• School schedules• Work schedules• Packed lunch

Culture?

Me

WifeSon

Born in IsraelRaised in

Israel

IndependentSchool (UK)

Living inThe UK

Raised inUKVoluntary aided

School (Israel)

Bread Maker

iPod, games,Jay Z

CDs, books,Tinariwen

Tie & Blazer

Google: “how to tie a tie”

Patterned Practices

Roepstorff et al: “human group life orders itself into specific and semi-stable patterns of interaction, i.e. practices. Practices are shaped by material conditions, social dynamics and normative orders” (2010, pp 1057)

• A response to the problematic of “Culture”

→ Shape our mind and body through embodiment, internalisation, narratisation

← Reshape the environment – physical and social – in which we operate.

Patterned practices

SonAlarm rings, crawl to the shower, dress (minus tie+blazer), get some breakfast, pack bag

(books, sports kit, lunch), put on tie and blazer, run for the bus

• Morning shower, breakfast + iPod game, school dress code, school bag

MeHear shower, remove bread from bread machine,

• Bread making, breakfast + newspaper, morning shower, office dress code, commuter bag

Learning?

→ Shape our mind and body through embodiment, internalisation, narratisation

← Reshape the environment – physical and social – in which we operate.

Roepstorff et al (2010) examples – • phoneme “blindness” caused by mother tongue / script.• Musicians’ mismatch-negativity response to deviations

in rhythmic structure• Variations in ultimatum game in small-scale societies.

Social-Mobile?

Material

IntentionalIntentional

SocialSocial

Material

Social

Intentional

Implications for design

Techno pedagogical design

=

Devising new experiences and tools to support them in response to educational goals

=Changing the material and

social fabric to engender new patterned practices in dialog with the intentional fabric

How?

• Map the material, social and intentional forces that define the problem space (survey)

• Identify tensions to resolve (analyse)• Narrate existing patterned practices (observe)• Narrate hypothetical patterned practices (scenarios)• Identify the technology in use, and how it could be

changed to support the desired scenarios

Force mapping

Storyboarding

Thank You!

Yishay Mor, iet.open.ac.uk/Yishay.Mor

Institute of Educational TechnologyThe Open UniversityWalton HallMilton KeynesMK7 6AA