Under the old system of trade skills education, instruction was delivered largely through kinesthetic methods. Currently, however, secondary and postsecondary trade skills education programs institutions in Australia and elsewhere are changing their educational emphasis from traditional skills to more technology-based skills. This shift raises the question of whether modern theories and technologies are more beneficial than traditional methods in which educators remain in control of content and time. Hybrid instruction, which combines face-to-face classroom instruction with computer-based learning, is one approach to integrating technology into the classroom. Although hybrid instruction allows for flexibility and gives students the opportunity to be more self-directed, it suffers in the application of kinesthetic skills to learning. Several Australian institutions, including the International Wine Academy of Australia, are now offering programs that require students to use touch and other senses. Two relevant areas of research are haptics (the experience of touching and manipulating objects or environments) and virtual synesthesia (a neurological condition in which a stimulus in one sense modality is involuntarily elicited in another). SmartRooms, which constitute another way of integrating technology into instruction, have the potential to incorporate kinesthetic learning into theory-based curricula. Institutions opting to integrate technologies in the classroom must avoid bifurcated teaching that emphasizes the theoretical over the practical. (Contains 14 references.) (MN)