Impact of New Media

New classroom media, like digital text, sound, images, and the World Wide Web, can be adjusted for different individuals and can open doors to learning. The most important quality for reaching every learner is the malleability, and thus enormous flexibility, of digital media. This flexibility makes it possible to customize options for gaining information, for expression, and even for content selection, tayloring the learning experience to each student.

More differentiated use of media for instruction reveals that individuals who are defined as “learning disabled” within print-based learning environments are not the same individuals defined as “learning disabled” within a video- or audio-based learning environments. Such revelations splinter the old catgorical divisions between “disability” and “ability” and create new descriptors that explicitly recognize the interaction between student and environment in the definition of strengths.
Once we realize that the barriers to learning occur not within students but in the intersection between students and curriculum, we can turn our focus to finding the barriers that impede learning and making the curriculum more flexible to reduce or eliminate those barriers.