...is no one right way to teach or to use technology. The real key is the actual design of the instruction. These technology tools simply offer a wider array of options to faculty. Technology can play an important role in fostering a climate of liberal learning in a number of important ways.

Technologies engage more of students' senses outside of class, exposing them to a richer environment than they would get just reading about things in a textbook or on a Web page. They can see it, hear it, and go places they might never experience otherwise.

We would never think about trying to do justice to Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech without letting students hear him deliver it and showing the crowd listening to him in Washington. Geography classes have always used media to take students to distant lands to show them different cultures, lifestyles, and basic life challenges.

With modern technology, though, students are not limited by traditional classroom time. Today, people learn from many sources, whether they are in school or not. People learn about politics and national policy from radio and cable talk shows. People learn about medicine and far-away places and history from the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, the Biography Channel, the Travel Channel, and a variety of shows on other cable channels. In fact, they can now download television programs to their cell phones. If we are serious about liberal learning, we need to both harness these powerful resources and provide students with direction and tools for evaluating them.

How do new educational technologies influence a student's learning experience?

Technology helps to improve liberal learning by making students more active learners. In a traditional class discussion, relatively few students really participate. Even those who do may not be listening and thinking about what others are saying. Instead, they are worried about being recognized and formulating what they will say. Others in the class are worried about lots of things other than the topic at hand. With modern technology, all students...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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