Context and Action

A lot has been happening since the last posting. I've been trying to work on a house that I'm supposed to have finished by the end of June. Greta, my daughter, took sick last week, which has taken me to places that I'd never had thought I'd go. Then there are the future plans for Singapore that seem so good and strong that are yet to take definition. I guess that is part of being at this point in my life.

A major project has been started for the Games, Learning and Society Conference that I am partaking in, as a game designer and panelist. I lead designing an Augmented Reality Game about Madison. Preliminary discussion has come up with some amazing ideas and I'm now focused on making this a very complete and well organized project. Could mean a lot to my future in game developement.

One note that I'd like to mention - I've have always been interested in action and context. I am curious how context defines action. In discussing this topic a few different things have come up - Situated action, Activity Theory, Distributed Cognition. All take action as the definitive way that people connect to there environment. For me though, I know that action is prescribed by context. While you can have a religious experience outside of a church, the church seems to focus our attention the actions of religion. Maybe that is a poor example. My point is that while action can move across context, context can solidfy action with a more meaningful purpose.

I made the example today with a friend that I see the relationship between action and context like coffee and cups. Coffee being action and the cup the context. So, while the coffee always remains the same, based on the cup the coffee takes on new preportions, shapes, aromas, etc.

Was watching a PBS documentary on the importance of mental stability and stress in medicine. They found that people who had less stress heal much more quickly. The program was talking about how medicine , while very much a black and white science, needs to learn that there are other aspects that effect healing, finding a need to embrace aspects that fall in a less quantifiable way. For me it's the same with our connection to our environment.

Action and Context work together. While they change and flucuate they still influence each other. So while educators focus on the action based studying of learning, I also think the context needs to be taken into consideration.

This is still loose thinking, but I has credence and will go somewhere.