Implications for Educators

With a better understanding of new and traditional media and how individual brains interact with each, teachers can reevaluate how they teach, how students learn, and how best to use various tools and techniques to individualize these processes. As our discussion of the three brain networks and individual differences makes plain, no single traditional instructional medium format works for all students. And although it is possible to remove barriers and expand access to learning by offering content in a variety of media, the fixed nature of speech, text, and images makes this an impractical, unviable option for most educators. The flexibility of new media opens new doors to diverse learners. Digital capacity to combine and transform text, speech, and images leads to a more diversified palette for communication-one that can accommodate the varied strengths and weaknesses of each medium and every brain.

Digital media also has the potential to transform the learning process. The hegemony of printed text has already disappeared in high-impact fields like advertising, entertainment, and communication, but in education, its dominance remains. In the years ahead, however, it is clear that text-only instruction will give way to a more deliberate application of multimedia. Instructional designers will use digital tools to tailor media to the task, to different kinds of learning, and to different kinds of students, reducing the barriers and inefficiencies inherent in one-size-fits-all printed textbooks. New expertise in the representational and expressive qualities of each medium and the new blends that will evolve will help educators reach a broader spectrum of students with a broader spectrum of knowledge.

Students with various kinds of disabilities are likely to be the earliest and most obvious beneficiaries. Media such as talking books, descriptive videos, and American Sign Language (ASL) tracks vastly increase both access and learning opportunities. Using digital tools actually changes those students' capacities and makes them far more capable. An extreme example is a student with severe physical and language disabilities who, independently, might be able to communicate only by indicating yes and no. With a computer and the right software tools, this student can be on an equal footing with others.

The incidental but equally important beneficiaries of new digital media for teaching will include teachers and students of subjects like math, music, geography, and physics-subjects that have never easily yielded their magic through linear text. Ultimately, the new media will benefit all learners.

Incorporating digital media into the classroom is an important step that requires thoughtful consideration. Accessing their flexibility requires a shift in how educators think about instruction. CAST's intent is to help teachers understand the process of integrating digital media into the curriculum to engage diverse learners in meaningful educational progress. Our framework, Universal Design for Learning, provides guidance for that process. In the next chapter, we define UDL in more detail and explain its three guiding principles.