Present Technology

One of the most common challenges to assessing the usefulness of educational technology is coming to terms with how different forms of social interaction affect learning. In a recent survey of brain development in babies of bilingual households, University of Washington researchers discovered that not only did early exposure to multiple languages stimulate brain development in the frontal and prefrontal areas of infant brains, but acquisition of languages also inherently depended on the the language being spoken between members of the household. The result of this stimulation was a mapping of brain connectivity that improved problem-solving skills. According to a recent New York Times article "This special mapping that babies seem to do with language happens in a social setting,” . . . “they need to be face to face, interacting with other people. The brain is turned on in a unique way.”

The University of Washington had already issued an earlier report that infant-directed television programing claiming to be "educational" was misleading, and the researchers and impacted companies have remained entangled in legal disputes since. Now, the American Academy of Pediatrics has followed up by definitively reporting that setting infants in front of "educational" programing or any other screen-based educational environment will not yield any learning until the infant is at least two years old. Also clear is that exposure to technologies such as television will “have potentially negative effects and no known positive effects for children younger than 2 years”according to the AAP study. It is believed that this is partially due to television disrupting a child's play, affecting crucial problem-solving and critical thinking development because it most likely acts from a distraction.

Comparing infant brains to graduate-level adult brains may be inappropriate (or perhaps not) but the results of this study do prove that human brains learn differently according to the method of content distribution - as the meta-engine of thought and education, the brain is making distinctions as to what is doing the teaching. Therefore, we know that how (or from what source) one attempts to learn can be as important as what one is attempting to learn. However, without further study on adult brains, we are left with little more to conclude, yet, than that there is a necessity to consider the different types of teaching (e.g. spatially oriented vs. online) are of as equal importance to learning as anything else, and therefore, different methods cannot be presumed to be equally effective.