Reach out and touch someone...

We had a speaker today at the Institute who has some very timely ideas about a neglected mode of learning and knowing the world. Roz Driscoll is a sculptor who makes haptic sculpture. That is sculpture that you can touch. As a person tossed out of many museums for touching the sculpture I can really relate to sculpture that is touchable. And Roz has identified something that has compelling importance for our relationship to the world. The sense of touch.

We live in wonderful times, using technology that can literally create worlds (of the virtual sort) and let us "fly" but the cost of this is a loss of a piece of how we relate to the world. We have replaced the making of art with paint and pencil, clay and wood with computer programs that let us draw a box and pull it up into a building on the screen, to make a watercolor with no water in sight and almost anything else. What are we killing in ourselves ( or allowing to atrophy) with this process. Even more frightening what are we doing to our children as they cursor their way across the screen.

The Last Child in the Woods is a book that looks at the nature deficiency that is another part of our societal disassociation from the world. I have a five year old. He is a master computer user, conversant in two operating systems. He has virtually taught himself with minimal input from me. When I was his age you couldn't get me indoors on a good day. It is difficult to get him to go out. He certainly doesn't get grubby enough for a five year old using the computer.

I plan to enroll him in 4-H. You can't relate to animals without touching them...and you're are bound to get dirty.

I often suprise myself...

...when I find that I have been up to things like creating a blogging site without telling myself. This blog, for instance, came to my attention when I followed a link to a fellow who is exploring the experience of disability in Second Life. It's something that I have been thinking of doing in terms of the possibilities around Deaf education. I have no idea when I set it up...

The possibilities for Second Life as a teaching tools are intriguing given the visual nature of both second life and some of the successful learning and teaching techniques in Deaf education.