The aim in this thesis is to understand the use of mobile technologies in the classroom. The study addresses the question of what kind of actions and activities are mediated by mobile tools and the contexts in which these activities occurred. This has been approached by empirical studies of students' and teachers' Personal Digital Assistant (PDA)-mediated actions and interactions. The study consisted of four periods of fieldwork, in two classes in Norway and two classes in the United States over two years.
The theoretical framework adopts a sociocultural perspective, but it also makes use of' the notions of affordances and constraints from human computer interaction (HCI) to analyse the activities and actions that can be identified in the classroom, and their contexts to identify challenges and opportunities for use of new technology in the classroom.
The findings show that the new tools challenge existing concepts of what constitutes a "good" educational classroom environment, and what activities count as Iearning in the classroom. Furthermore, there was a difference between the activities initiated by the teachers at the two schools. At one school, the teacher-defined activities simulated the use of a predecessor tool. whilst at the other school the activities exploited the new successor tool's affordances. Despite the differences in the teachers' use, the activities defined by the students were similar across all classes in both countries. These activities also revealed a close resemblance to a set of teacher-initiatcd activities like searching for information. The differences showed up in what the students looked for, but they used the same tools to accomplish it (PDA and a search engine).
These findings highlight the need to understand both contextual and tool aspects of' a new technology in the classroom in order to explain how, why. and for what reasons certain tools are used and not used.
The study was conducted at the Department of Educational Research and InterMedia at the University of Oslo and funded by the University of Agder and Kompetansefondet.
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