Augmenting Learners: Educating the Transhuman

Abstract

As augmenting technologies develop, they can become an increasingly integral part of our embodied, distributed, and disembodied identities. This has a potentially profound impact on the social posi-tioning and agency of currently disabled learners and those with learning difficulties. This chapter presents a critical analysis of augmented environments and of transhumanism (the development of mental and physical characteristics through technological means), in the context of creating inclusive educational experiences. This analysis makes use of examples that encompass augmented sensory technologies and more “hardwired” augmentative approaches to transforming learners and learning experiences. Within this context, the ways in which inclusive education will be reconstructed by and for transhumans are discussed.