**3. Learning understood as** *productive interactions*

Greeno, Collins and Resnic in their influential chapter on Cognition and Learning in Handbook of Educational Psychology (1996) refer to three traditions when it comes to conceptualisation of knowledge: In a behavioristic/empiristic perspective learning is seen as acquiring and applying associations. In a cognitive/rationalist view learning means to be able to acquire and use conceptual and cognitive structures. Finally the situative/ pragmatist-socio-historic perspective understands learning as a means to become attuned to constraints and affordances through participation. The computer can support all these ways of understanding learning. In the first case the computer is understood as a tutor or an instructor. In the second as a tool for individual knowledge building, and in the third the technology is seen as a mediating artefact for learning. Koschman (1996) uses the concept paradigm to explain the difference in perspectives on learning. The situative/pragmatist perspective claims that collaborative activities, creativity and argumentation are fundamental for learning through participants' sharing and constructing new knowledge. Through collaborative activities students are able to solve problems that are beyond the limits of what they would possibly have managed on their own. *Productive interactions* are depending on interaction between social aspects and the technology. Educational technology has the possibility for building new spaces inside the physical space. *Productive*  *interactions* are the combination of the students' willingness to collaboration, assignments that open for creativity and argumentation and the technology. There are no correct answers. Opposite one question opens new questions in a creative dialogue. Creativity, reflection and imagination as well as argumentation and reasoning are valued in the understanding of the concept *productive interactions* (Helleve, 2009b).
