Conclusions

The result of new technologies will be a re-centering of the core agenda of schools on learning instead of content. This will be fostered by advances in our understanding of what learning really is, how diversified it is, and which methods - such as Universal Design for Learning - are articulated and flexible enough to meet the diverse learning needs of all the students.

But the most fundamental change will come in our understanding of goals. The ultimate educational goals will no longer be about the mastery of content (content will be available everywhere, anytime, electronically) but about the mastery of learning. At commencement, we will graduate students who are "expert learners." They will know their own strengths and weaknesses, know the kinds of media, adaptations, strategies, and external technologies they can use to overcome their weaknesses and extend their strengths, and the kinds of colleagues who are likely to complement their own patterns of learning and performance. They will be prepared for a changing world, not a static one, prepared for the world in which they will actually live.

The particular benefit for students with disabilities is that the new technologies will, by necessity, recognize both the reality and the virtue of diversity. The technologies of the future will be more, not less, diverse, and they will engage many kinds of learners. The implicit goal of education will change from homogenization (all students pointed toward one outcome and measured by one yardstick) to diversification -- identifying and fostering the inherent diversity among all of them, identifying new kinds of learning, new kinds of teaching, and new kinds of success.

Students with disabilities will have much to gain, and much to offer, in that enterprise.