Senses, technology and bodily knowing mediaccions extraordinary seminar
17 March, 2011, 4-7 pm
IN•3-UOC Edifici Media TIC – Sala 6C
Roc Boronat, 117, Barcelona
Contemporary everyday use of ICT and the development of touch-and-go learning strategies
Dr. Vaike Fors, Halmstad University
Through an analysis of how a group of 17-year olds use pictures and text on the website “bilddagboken” / a webbased photo diary, I will discuss how the touching of keyboards on computers/mobile phones can be thought of as a form of sensory learning strategy that attunes our bodies into motion (through imagination and memories) and therefore also emplace ourselves as learning selves in motion. I am using the touch-and-go metaphor because the results propose a learning strategy that is constituted in the relationship between touch, motion and the practice of putting yourself “at risk”. I have converted research material into sequential art in my analysis in order to use the same strategies when representing findings. It is not in the pictures but in the in-betweens meaning is enfolded and enacted.
Explosiveness and other articulations of bodily knowing in skateboarding.
Dr. Åsa Bäckström, Stockholm University
In social sciences and humanities ‘the body’ is accentuated to the extent that we may even talk about a ‘corporeal turn’. Through ethnographic research on skateboarding I explore the particular practice of energy transformation and how this kinaesthetic knowing is expressed and taught. The paper adds theoretically and empirically to recent arguments of a shift from embodiment to emplacement. By way of conclusion, a more elaborate focus on the sensory experiences is suggested to better understand the intersections of mind, body, place and learning.
Short bios:
Vaike Fors is Senior lecturer at Halmstad University in Sweden. She earned her PhD 2006 in educational sciences at the Luleå University of Technology, and had a Post Doc position in the Linneaus Centre for Research on Learning, Interaction and Mediated Communication in Contemporary Society (LinCS), Gothenburg University, 2007-2009. At the moment, she is involved in two governmentally funded research projects, both concerning learning and meaning-making in museums; a)Young people’ sensory experiences of meaning-making in virtual reality and museums (project leader Vaike Fors), and b) The Museum, the exhibition and the visitors. Meaning making in a new arena for learning and communication (project leader is prof Staffan Selander, Stockholms university).
Åsa Bäckström is Senior lecturer in Child and Youth Studies at Stockholm University. Most recently, she held a position at Stockholm Institute of Education as a lecturer and also editor of Locus – a journal for research on children and young people. In 2005, Bäckström defended her PhD “Traces – on Board Sport Cultures, Informal Learning processes, and Identity” at the Swedish School of Sports and Health Sciences (GIH). Previously she coordinated the Swedish national research network for studies on youth culture (NU – Nätverket för Ungdomskulturforskning) hosted by the Department of Journalism, Media and Communication at Stockholm University. The autumn (spring in NZ) of 2008 she was a visiting scholar at the School of Physical Education, Otago University in New Zealand and has a BA in Social Anthropology (1995), Stockholm University.
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