GoodWork Paper 66: Digital Media Open New Doors for MI

Author(s): James Croft

Editor(s): Howard Gardner, Series Editor

Media: Paper

Description: New digital media technologies offer the potential to teach in a multitude of novel ways, giving educators the opportunity to explore avenues to learning that were undreamt of just a few decades ago. Harnessing this potential requires educators and designers of technology to consider how they might address the needs of different types of learners. This paper investigates how new digital media technologies can serve educational goals associated with the theory of multiple intelligences (MI), and in the process engage learners with different intelligence profiles. I evaluate three cases of the use of digital media in educational settings in terms of how they might activate different intelligences: SMALLab, an interactive mixed reality learning environment; Scratch, a visual programming language; and a museum exhibit in virtual world Second Life created by the Spencer Museum of Art. I suggest that, in order to be effective, educators and designers must consider the “MI affordances” of a particular technology, asking how new technologies might enable a subject matter to be presented in different ways. By analyzing these attempts to utilize the new digital media for educational ends through the lens of MI theory, this research aims to be of service both to educators seeking to use new technologies to help students learn, and designers hoping to create new learning tools.