This article attempts to make visible everyday activities and underlines the importance of ethnographic studies of communication in order to allow for expanded understandings of diversity and bilingualism in the context of ”one school for all”. The article is based on studies conducted in visual educational arenas (i e settings for Deaf students that can be understood as ”segregating integrated”). Technological tools are used as resources and a natural part of activities in these arenas. In addition different linguistic systems are used in complex patterned ways. Here different codes and systems are chained  together in two ways: local chaining and event chaining. Demystifying interaction between human beings and between human beings and cultural artefacts and tools in institutional settings enables an understanding of bilingualism in terms of complex discursive-technological practices . This is contrasted against a common reductionistic conceptualisation of bilingualism that is problematic.