From experiences in a dynamic environment to written narratives on functions

This study focusses on high school students’ written discourse about their experiences in a dynamic interactive digital environment in which functions were represented in one dimension, as dynagraphs, that are digital artefacts in which the independent variable can be acted upon and its movement causes the variation of the dependent variable. After the introduction of the notion of Dynamic Interactive Mediators within the theory of Commognition, we analyze and classify students’ written productions describing their experience with the dynagraphs. We present this classification as a tool of analysis that allows us to gain insight into how their writing reflects the temporal and dynamic dimensions of their experience with the dynagraphs. This tool is used to analyze 11 excerpts; finally, epistemological, cognitive and didactic implications of this tool are discussed.