Search results for "Affordance"

Mathematical Learning Opportunities in Kindergarten through the Use of Digital Tools: Affordances and Constraints

2013

Accepted version of an article in the journal: Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy. Also available from the publisher at: http://www.idunn.no/ts/dk/2013/03/mathematical_learning_opportunities_in_kindergarten_through This study aims at scrutinising the mathematical learning opportunities of children engaging with digital tools and the emerging affordances and constraints faced in such settings. By adopting a sociocultural perspective on learning and development, the multimodal analysis of the adult-child interaction shows that the children are participants in processes of appropriating the mathematical concepts of sorting and counting. Affordances are taken advantage of by the adults and cons…

Digital communication environments in the workplace

2019

Digital communication environments consist of various kinds of communication technologies and collaboration platforms. These enable employees to communicate through text, audio, video, and graphics, often in an open and networked way. Complementing the popular stand-alone communication tools regularly used in workplaces, such as email and instant messaging, digital communication environments enable the sharing, editing, and storing of information publicly within the organization and sometimes externally among its stakeholders. This chapter reviews and analyzes digital communication environments as well as their affordances and constraints for communication and social interaction in the work…

Performing transnational family with the affordances of mobile apps : a case study of Polish mothers living in Finland

2020

Affordances provided by digital technologies and mobile apps (WhatsApp, Skype, Messenger) help in maintaining familyhood. These mobile apps enable the creation of in-app family groups. They also afford image sharing, which is used for phatic purposes. Digital connectivity provides the illusions of togetherness and belonging, and allows for performing family in a transnational context (emotional transnationalism). However, it also generates the feelings of guilt through infrequent communication. In the auto-driven visual elicitation interviews, the study looks at family constellations and technologically mediated communication from the perspective of five Polish mothers living in Finland. Ap…

Suomen kielen oppimisen mahdollisuudet ja työyhteisön tuki puhdistuspalvelualalla: afrikkalaisten maahanmuuttajien käsityksiä ja kokemuksia

2013

This article presents a triple case study of African immigrants’ beliefs about Finnish language learning and support of the work community in the cleaning industry. Cleaning does not require a high language proficiency and it is therefore a typical first job for immigrants, a so-called entrance job. The theoretical framework of the study combines dialogical and sociocultural perspectives on language learning. Learners’ beliefs about work-related affordances and scaffolding are analysed using a dialogical analysis of beliefs. The interviewees’ shared belief is that in spite of their simple duties, cleaning work does provide affordances for learning, e.g. in the form of work-related announcem…

2018

Currently, there are various definitions for extreme sports and researchers in the field have been unable to advance a consensus on what exactly constitutes an 'extreme' sport. Traditional theory-led explanations, such as edgeworks, sensation seeking and psychoanalysis, have led to inadequate conceptions. These frameworks have failed to capture the depth and nuances of experiences of individuals who refute the notions of risk-taking, adrenaline- and thrill-seeking or death-defiance. Instead, participants are reported to describe experiences as positive, deeply meaningful and life-enhancing. The constant evolution of emerging participation styles and philosophies, expressed within and across…

Affordances of telecollaboration tools for English for Specific Purposes online learning

2016

This paper explores students' perceptions of the affordances of different telecollaboration tools used in an innovation project for English for Specific Purposes online learning carried out between the University of Valencia (Spain) and Wofford College (South Carolina, United States) during the school year 2015-2016. Different tools for synchronous and asynchronous communication were used. The asynchronous tools included a discussion forum, a wiki, social networking websites and Google forms; while the tools used for synchronous communication were text, voice and video chat, videoconferencing tools and Google Drive. All the tools were accessible through the online platform used in the proje…

Communicating with home, coping without home – Trusting to the mediating capacity of blogging

2021

Abstract In the early 21st century, blogs exploded onto the digital media scene and soon became a popular means of travel writing. However, rather than considering blogs as a straightforward tool to simply share stories and experiences, in this article, we set out to explore the role of blogs as a mediating technology (Verbeek, 2005a), especially during difficult times abroad. By analysing the blogs of expatriate Australians who were volunteers in Bangladesh in 2014/2015 as well as interviews with the bloggers, we are able to show how the blogs' affordances inform the coping process, highlighted, in particular, in an active and highly reflective engagement with the blog's unique situatednes…

A Dialectical Reading of Dynamic Systems Theory : Transcending Socialized Cognition and Cognized Social Dualism in L2 Studies

2016

Dynamic systems theory (DST) has affordances to be a quintessential metatheoretical architecture for the nuancing of the time-locked mechanisms and processes of the L2 system. The received construal of DST in L2 studies presumes the emergence of structural regularities and the cognitive organization of the L2 system as simply a function of lower-level language use in social milieux. Critiquing some of the bedrock assumptions anchoring the extant reading, this article sketches a complementary dialectical construal of DST. Explicating circular causality, a nexus of causality types, and self-organizational emergence and their attendant implications for an adequate description and explanation o…

‘I shared the joy’: sport-related social support and communality on Instagram

2020

The popularity of sharing photographs on digital platforms has increased significantly due to the communicative affordances of mobile media and the emergence of photo-sharing applications, such as Instagram. In this paper, we examine how social support and communality can be built and reinforced through digital visual communication. We focus especially on photo sharing in the context of recreational climbing and trail running. In a qualitative study with Finnish climbers and runners, we asked what meanings sports practitioners ascribe to the practice of sharing and observed how they communicate these meanings through photographs. The results indicate that different types of visual content b…

Exploring the Affordances of SimReal for Learning Mathematics in Teacher Education: A Socio-Cultural Perspective

2020

SimReal is an innovative technology that emerged the last few years in mathematics education. It provides new potentialities for mathematical learning by means of dynamic and interactive visualizations of mathematical concepts. This paper uses SimReal in the context of teacher education to explore the affordances and constraints of the tool for the learning of mathematics. It presents a framework that combines Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory, the role of mediation, and the notion of affordance at a technological, pedagogical, and socio-cultural level. The aim of the article is to explore the extent to which SimReal as a mediating artifact affords students’ mathematical learning in teacher …