Multimedia Encourages New Learning Styles

Educational technology, when used appropriately, helps the teacher and the students to create a caring, creative community of learners. -- Joan Riedl, The Integrated Technology Classroom: Building Self- Reliant Learners

Modern computer and communication technology is becoming commonplace in a growing number of schools. The presence of hi-tech does not mean that it is being used wisely, however. One of the properties of most technologies is that they are as capable of perpetuating paradigms of the past as they are of setting the stage for the future.

Consider classroom computers, for example. When these tools first came into our schools, many of them were used to present math drill to students who simply moved their practice from a four-dollar workbook to a $2,500 computer. The ultimate altar to the Skinnerian gods was the "Integrated Learning System," comprising a laboratory filled with instructional computers that replicated the full-frontal approach to content delivery. Tragically, many students who had previously failed to learn through this approach when it was applied by a human teacher now had the opportunity to replicate their failure with a computer instead.

Proven pedagogical models, such as Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, provide educators with concrete strategies for addressing the needs of every learner. It is important to recognize that, just as students may have their own dominant modalities of expression and learning, teachers do as well. This is where technology can play an increasingly valuable role.

This does not mean, however, that any program filled with rich media elements is automatically valuable. Our task in education is to engage, not entertain, the learner. Our new tools provide the capability to do this, but the art of software development still requires careful thought about both the pedagogy and curriculum.

One of the more exciting areas today is that of student-generated media. When computers become commonplace, we can free students from the constraints of the linear, purely word based report, and allow students to express their mastery of a subject through multimedia creations of their own. These pieces can incorporate a rich panoply of visual and auditory devices, as well as provide numerous pathways through the material using the medium of "hypertext." Multimedia creations using tools such as Hyperstudio, for example, may represent the new illuminated manuscript -- sensory rich documents that can become part of each learner's portfolio.

Add to this the multimedia capabilities of the web, and students literally have the world of information at their fingertips, with much of this information available to them in ways easy for them to grasp.

As new media are used by students both as their source of raw information and as the tools through which they express their mastery, the role of educator changes. Instead of teachers providing "content" to students, they now are freed to help students find "context" and meaning in their studies. T. S. Eliot's poem "The Rock" addresses these issues when he asks:

Where is the life we've lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we've lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we've lost in information?

Modern technological tools let us work with information in ways that honor the unique learning modalities of each student. The educator's role in this new era is to help run Eliot's lines backward -- to help our students find the knowledge in the information, to help them find the wisdom in this knowledge, and, most importantly, to help them find the life in living.