The Opportunity: New Brain Research and New Technologies

Historically, most ideas about individual learning differences have been based on the assumption that the brain is roughly the same all over and that its different parts are essentially indistinguishable with respect to their roles in learning. This idea bred a decidedly one-dimensional view of learning and intelligence, as represented by measurement concepts like a single IQ score. In contrast, more recent theories, such as Multiple Intelligences theory (see Gardner, 1993), are consistent with what we are now discovering about the learning brain-namely that students do not have one global learning capacity, but many multifaceted learning capacities, and that a disability or challenge in one area may be countered by extraordinary ability in another.

Further, and of particular note for our purposes, the evaluation of ability is often confounded by the means and medium used to conduct the evaluation. For example, a person who appears learning disabled in a print-bound, text-based environment may look extraordinarily skilled in a graphics- or video-based environment.

Fortunately, technological advances have equipped educators with tremendous new instructional resources in the form of computers and digital media. New technologies offer us the opportunity to respond to the multifaceted individual differences in our student population by providing more varied media, tools, and methods. Because of their inherent flexibility, digital technologies can adjust to learner differences, enabling teachers to (1) differentiate problems a student may have using particular kinds of learning media from more general learning problems and (2) draw upon a student's other strengths and interests that may be blocked by the exclusive use of printed text.

Insights from recent brain research and the power of new technological tools combine to help meet the challenges posed by learner diversity in a time of heightened emphasis on standards, in the framework we call Universal Design for Learning.