Affordances Offered by the Material Nature of a Website Designed for Teacher Learning

Abstract

This chapter explores the nature of material practice from the perspective of technology, in particular the affordances for learning offered by the materiality of the Internet. A main focus of the chapter arises from the opportunities for teachers' learning offered by video and associated tasks as part of web-based professional development. The symbolic representations of the Internet and human interaction with these materials have to be understood within social and historic contexts. On the one hand, the content of a particular website sets up conditions for how these content are displayed, viewed, and explored, but on the other hand, the content and use affect its being. A website sets up a range of possibilities, yet as interaction takes places, the range of these possibilities shifts. The materiality of a website is therefore both condition for and result of the actual use. Understanding this provides a theoretical perspective through which the process of learning through the participatory design of web-based materials can be understood.