The Body Learns

For years weve been telling kids to sit still and pay
attention. Thats all wrong.
By Annie Murphy Paul

Sam
Herman, 7, draws on the SMART Board 885, an interactive whiteboard system that uses
multitouch technology, at the Macworld 2011 showroom in San Francisco on Jan. 29, 2011.
Incorporating bodily movementseven subtle onescan improve learning.
Photo by Ryan Anson/AFP/Getty Images
Todays educational technology often presents itself as a radical departure from the tired
practices of traditional instruction. But in one way, at least, it faithfully follows the conventions
of the chalk-and-blackboard era: EdTech addresses only the students head, leaving the rest of the
body out.
Treating mind and body as separate is an old and powerful idea in Western culture. But this
venerable trope is facing down a challenge from a generation of researchersin cognitive
science, psychology, neuroscience, even philosophywho claim that we think with and through

our bodies. Even the most abstract mathematical or literary concepts, these researchers maintain,
are understood in terms of the experience of our senses and of moving ourselves through space.
This perspective, known as embodied cognition, is now becoming a lens through which to look
at educational technology. Work in the field shows promising signs that incorporating bodily
movementseven subtle onescan improve the learning thats done on computers.
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For example, Margaret Chan and John Black of Teachers College of Columbia University
have shown that physically manipulating an animation of a roller coasterby sliding the cars up
and down the tracks and watching the resulting changes in kinetic and potential energy, as shown
in a bar graphhelps students understand the workings of gravity and energy better than static
on-screen images and text. This embodied approach to instruction, the authors found, is
especially helpful to younger students and to those working on more difficult problems. In
counterintuitive domains like physics, bodily rooted learning allows the learner to develop a
feel for the concept being described, a physical sense that is more comprehensible and
compelling than a concept that remains an abstract mental entity.
Bodily movements provide the memory with additional cues with which to represent and retrieve
the knowledge learned.
In similar experiments, led by Insook Han of Hanyang Cyber University in South Korea,
students learn about the concept of force by using a joystick to move two gears shown on a
computer screen. Hans studies show that allowing users to physically manipulate the gears in
this way improves their memory and problem-solving performance on force-related questions.
The richer the perceptual experience provided by the computer program, the greater the students
understanding and retention of the material.
One reason involving the body improves learning is that bodily movements provide the memory
with additional cues with which to represent and retrieve the knowledge learned. Taking action in
response to information, in addition to simply seeing or hearing it, creates a richer memory trace
and supplies alternative avenues for recalling the memory later on. Movement may also allow
users to shed some of their cognitive loadthe burden imposed by the need to keep track of
information. Instead of trying to imagine what the gears would do if moved, a mentally taxing
activity, learners can allow their hands to do it and see what happens, freeing up mental resources
to think more deeply about whats happening. This is pretty much how we all learned to drive.
From an evolutionary perspective, our brains developed to help us solve problems in the real
world, moving through space and manipulating actual objects. More abstract forms of thought,
such as mathematics and written language, came later, and they repurposed older regions of the
brain originally dedicated to processing input from the senses and from the motor system.
This repurposing is apparent in the frequency with which we use physically grounded metaphors
to express abstract ideas: counting is like moving through space (the countdown is approaching
zero); accommodating two different principles is like balancing them on a scale. Bringing the

body back into the equation can provide learners with a useful way station between concrete
referents and all-out abstraction. Physically acting out knowledge to be learned or problems to be
solved makes the conceptual metaphors employed by our brains a literal reality.

Technology as a Tool to Support Instruction

By Lynne Schrum
This week, in an Education World "edu-torial," Lynne Schrum presents her personal
perspective on the ways in which technology can enhance learning -- and calls on educators
to take a leadership role in determining the ways in which technology is used to support
educational goals.
Lynne Schrum, past president of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), is an
associate professor in the department of instructional technology at the University of Georgia. Her
research, teachings, and writings focus on issues related to distance education, specifically online
learning. Schrum also investigates the uses of technology in K-12 environments and identifies ways
to support educators in the effort.
We're all familiar with the extravagant promises of technology: It will make our students smarter -and it will do it faster and cheaper than ever before. Moreover, the promise suggests, this miracle will
occur almost by osmosis. We need only place a computer in a room, stand back, and watch the
magic take place. If only life were that simple and learning that easy!
Those of us who remember the 1980s, when computers were first making their way into our
classrooms, probably also remember a great deal of bad software. As educators, we were unfamiliar
with the technology and uncertain about its possibilities. So we stepped back and let software
developers, hardware vendors, and other technicians define not only what we could buy but also
how those products would be used. In many ways, the technology drove the educational process.
And guess what? It didn't work very well!
Now, we've entered an era in which technology is no longer an intimidating novelty. Its use in
business and industry is both accepted and expected. And pressure abounds -- from the federal
government, from local school boards, and certainly from the popular press -- for educators to get on
board and see to it that students become technologically skilled.
But is mere technological skill enough?
Two points should be considered.