Technology, Learning, and the Evolution of Touch

• In Event: Embodied Epistemologies and Methodologies in the Digital/New Media Curriculum

Abstract

Learning and knowing is an embodied experience that engages all of the senses in a matrix of cognitive and emotional experiences as an individual constructs their learning experience. This paper will trace the western cultural history of technology-mediated touch in relationship to learning. It will argue that the social experiences of touch mediated by technology have and continues to have a profound impact on the ways the learning occurs.

Touch is a combined sense from multiple sensations including temperature, pressure, pleasure, pain, and movement. It has not been well documented in cultural histories because it is the most undifferentiated of the senses and is often experienced in the realm of another sense (Gilman, 1993). Closely tied to the development and evolution of Christianity, touch has been highlighted in religious history in relationship to ideas about pleasure, sacrifice, pain, and divine connections to God’s touch. The middle ages labeled touch as a lower sense (Smith, 2007). This trend continued in the enlightenment where it was considered unreliable and was subjected to rational and scientific disciplining (Gowing, 2003). During this time the body became abstracted in the practices of geometry, which translated the world into measurable mathematical calculations and lead toward an abstraction of sensory experience (Paterson, 2007).

The cultural history of particular technologies around class will be addressed in the paper. For example, in the 18th century touch was not just a medium of sensation but a canvas upon which the perceptions of class were written (e.g., crudeness was determined by the roughness of skin, clothing texture, furniture comfort and room temperature (Crowley, 2003)). During the past 150 years the touch of the hand has become an important signifier (Harvey, 2003). For example, the hand has become implicated in the ways that babies and children are touched. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries touching children was not encouraged for fear of over stimulating them and spreading tuberculosis (Classen, 2005). These standards of appropriate touch went through various incarnations in the 20th century and continue to evolve.

Theses social, scientific, and cultural histories will be used to explore how touch informs learning using 21st century learning technologies including tablets, phones, computers, video games, and other classroom technologies. Touch has become a greater participant in the interaction with digital devices. Many young learners have become accustomed to interacting with their digital devices though a complex gestural grammar. Digital interactions have become increasingly bi-directional as digital devices like games and phones provide tactile feedback. These haptic interfaces move beyond hands to whole body movement through game devices like the Wii and the Kinect camera. Making a connection between the histories of touch and current digital devices used for learning will provide an opportunity to contextualize these current technologies within broader histories of embodiment that still inform educational practices. This is particularly relevant in light of recent neurological evidence that suggests that the senses are not distinct modalities and are processed by the brain in relationship to each other.

Author

• Rick J. Voithofer, The Ohio State University