Distributed Cognition (DC) has reached a considerable degree of credibility in the psychological and educational literature. Since it was first introduced by Hutchins in the mid 1980s, DC has been recognized as enlarging the unit of analysis of human action--from individual cognition to the inclusion of the social dimensions, artifacts, and structure of the environment within which human action takes place. By adopting such an analysis unit, DC dissolves the traditional divisions between the inside/outside boundary of the individual (cf. Harnad, 2005), the culture/cognition debate, (e.g. Dakers, 2005; Derry, 1996), and focuses instead on the interactions between the distributed structures of the learner and the learning world (Rogers, 2004; Rudestam, DiStefano, & Silverman, 2004). We contend that technology is an integral part of that world--an artifact which is able to play an important role in sustaining and empowering DC.

Many studies have examined the role technology can play as part of the DC system (Dieterle & Dede, & Schrier, 2007; Kim & Baylor, 2006; Pea, 1993). Dieterle and Dede (2007), for example, called for teachers to use wireless handheld devices in learning experiences in class, understanding the strengths and limitations of these devices. They claim that these media can induce learning styles as, for example, "learning based on collectively, seeking, sieving and synthesizing experiences rather than individually locating and absorbing information from a single best source" (Dieterle & Dede, 2007, p. 51). Pea (1993) made the point that new technologies can support human activities by serving as experimental platforms in the evolution of intelligence, by opening up new possibilities for distributed intelligence. Kim and Baylor (2006) suggested that computer based environments that provide pedagogical agents as learning companions can create a more interactive social environment making learning part of a social process. In short, teachers are encouraged to make efficient and effective implementation of technology in their classroom in order to support the computer mediated DC functions technology affords (Petrina, 2007).

Still, however, the extent to which a classroom can be part of an extended virtual environment has been inadequately explored. Although virtual environments are recognized as an effective educational tool (Bricken, 1991; Renninger & Shumar, 2002), it is not clear how virtual environments may impact the DC system. We propose to analyse changes in the intersubjectivity architecture between constituents of a classroom system as a way of understanding the impact of the classroom as an active part DC.

In the following, we first give a brief introduction of what we mean by intersubjectivity and why we think it informs and enhances the conceptual architecture of DC. Later, we conceptualize technology as a particular type of artifact operating within this architecture. Finally, we present a project where the artifact of technology is embedded within a complex project aimed at building an educational virtual environment. There, technology becomes a cultural artifact emanating from the joint action of many actors (students, teachers, experts, researchers) in their use of, and understanding of each other via, the virtual environment--an intersubjectivity that is both informed by, and amplifies, the concepttual framework of DC.