MI ND, BRAI N, AND EDUCATI ON

Mind, Brain, and Education

in the Digital Era
Antonio M. Battro
1
and Kurt W. Fischer
2
ABSTRACTComputers are everywhere, and they are
transforming the human world. The technology of computers
and the Internet is radically changing the ways that people
learn and communicate. In the midst of this technology-
driven revolution people need to examine the changes to
analyze how they are altering interaction and human culture.
The changes have already permeated societies around the
world, altering learning, teaching, communication, politics,
and most aspects of human interaction. The possibilities for
improving educational effectiveness seempowerful, as a result
of an information revolution with online access to innite
information and numerous teaching and learning activities of
adults and children at school, at home, and in public places.
An urgent need is for systematic longitudinal studies of what
happens with learning and teaching as people use computers
and play with the Internet. Perhaps the new technologies
make possible a new kind of constructive dialogue, with
intertwiningof teachingandlearninginadynamicdoublehelix
of questions and answers, of modeling and experimentation.
This special section will deal with (1) uses of newtechnologies
to help people teach and learn more effectively, (2) uses of
individual laptops to help children learn, (3) creation of new
tools for learning and assessment, and (4) techniques that
image brain structure and activity.
We live in a digital era, and education is being transformed
by the new digital environment, leading to new possibilities
for teaching, learning, and pedagogy. Today we can study
how teachers interact with students in extended digital
environments. Importantly, not only do adults teach in digital
environments, but childrenteachtooinwhat amounts toanew
digital ecosystem for learning and teaching! Indeed the digital
environment is becominganexpandedschool without borders,
1
Academia Nacional de Educacion, Buenos Aires
2
Harvard Graduate School of Education
Address correspondence to Kurt W. Fischer, Harvard Graduate School
of Education, Larsen Hall 702, Appian Way, Cambridge, MA 02138;
e-mail: kurt_scher@harvard.edu.
led by the omnipresence of computersfrom the powerful
minicomputers in cell phones to computers in laptops and so
many other places.
This journal is dedicated to publishing articles that
illuminate how neuroscience, cognitive science, pedagogy,
and technology can work together to transform learning and
teaching (Fischer et al., 2007). The possibilities for improving
educational effectiveness seem powerful, and we would like
to facilitate communicating about ways to use technology to
improve education.
These papers as well as several papers to appear in this
journal in the future were presented as part of the Sixth
Annual Workshop on Mind, Brain, and Education at the
Ettore Majorana Foundation and Center for Scientic Culture
in the ancient city of Erice in Sicily. The topic for this years
workshopwas Educationinthe Digital Era, witha focus onthe
diverse uses of technology to facilitate learning and teaching.
TheInternet byitself has createdarevolutionof information,
with online access to thousands of teaching and learning
activities of adults and children around the world, at school,
at home, and in public places. There is an urgent need for
systematic longitudinal studies of what happens withlearning
and teaching as people use computers and play with the
Internet. There is such a large scale of communication, and
much of it involves learning and teaching on a large scale! How
can we assess what is happening with the emergence of so
many new ways of communicating? What effects are all the
new kinds of communication having on children and adults?
How are people being changed by the emergence of so many
new ways of staying in touch with friends and family, and so
many new ways of reaching out to the rest of the world?
For example, students transmit hundreds of text messages
a day. What effects do those activities have on writing and
communication skills? Thousands of people now take courses
online, making use of the tools of computers and the Internet,
using communication technologies that were not available
only a decade ago. What happens to brain and behavior with
this rapidly evolving dynamic system of teaching and learning
skills?
Education is still essentially about virtue, about the
unfolding in our minds of the values of truth, goodness,
2012 the Authors
Volume 6Number 1 Journal Compilation 2012 International Mind, Brain, and Education Society and Blackwell Publishing, Inc. 49
Antonio M. Battro and Kurt W. Fischer
and beauty (Goldin, Pezzatti, Battro, &Sigman, 2011). We can
still ask the central question of Meno to Socrates, rst asked
2400 years ago:
Can you tell me, Socrates, whether virtue is acquired by teaching or
practice; or if neither by teaching nor practice, then whether it comes
to man by nature, or in what other way? (Plato, Meno).
Perhaps the new technologies make possible a new kind
of constructive dialogue, where teaching and learning are
strongly intertwined in a dynamic double helix of questions
and answers, of modeling and experimentation. Can the new
technology make possible a new kind of neurocognitive
support for learning and teaching? Surely the digital era
provides challenges for traditional pedagogy and with those
challenges come many potential new ways of learning and
teaching. How can scientists and teachers join together to
build useful tools to help people learn and develop toward
truth, goodness, and beauty and away from war, pestilence,
and death?
At the Sixth Course of the International Workshop on
Mind, Brain and Education at the Ettore Majorana Centre
in Erice, August 37, 2011, we invited a group of experts
from the Americas, Europe, and Asia to discuss key issues
related to education in the digital era. With this issue of Mind,
Brain, and Education, we are establishing a special focus on
how technology is transforming communication and learning
around the world. We begin in this volume with two areas
where technology has created potential revolutions for people
with handicaps: the application of digital technologies for the
education of deaf children (Denhamand Battro) and the use of
laptops to facilitate learning and adaptation in children with
motor disabilities (Mangiatordi).
The education of the deaf has changed dramatically
in the last 10 years with the implementation of advanced
communication technologies (Denham&Battro, 2012). High-
performance digital hearing aids and advanced cochlear
implants have transformed the lives of many children,
including in the most successful cases helping deaf children to
develop hearing and speaking skills so that thousands of them
can be included in mainstream education. This seems to be
the rst time that children with an important handicap have
been transformed so dramatically by an electronic advance.
Thousands of children are able to hear and speak for the rst
time, although unfortunately many others do not benet in
the same way from cochlear implants and hearing aids.
For children with motor disabilities, the use of digital
equipment is alsoof paramount importance andmust be imple-
mented case-by-case using special interfaces and software to
control the computerized environment. For many children
(such as two of the three cases described by Mangiatordi,
2012) computer interfaces can create newpossibilitieseffec-
tively new abilitiesthat open up important ways of acting
and learning. It is usually possible to create a digital prosthesis
to help with motor disabilities (Battro, 2000).
In the following issues, we will continue to publish other
articles on ways that technology can facilitate learning and
teaching, including (1) the uses of individual laptops to help
children with digital education, (2) the digital revolution
in learning and assessment, (3) brain imaging techniques,
(4) portable lowcost telescopes for the laptops in schools, and
(5) other topics dealing with the uses of new technologies to
help people teach and learn more effectively. We expect
that these contributions will elicit further improvements
and developments in many arenas connected with digital
education.
REFERENCES
Battro, A. (2000). Half a brain is enough: The case of Nico. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Denham, P. J., & Battro, A. M. (2012). Education of the deaf and hard
of hearing in the digital era. Mind, Brain, and Education, 6(1), 5153.
Fischer, K. W., Daniel, D. B., Immordino-Yang, M. H., Stern, E.,
Battro, A., & Koizumi, H. (2007). Why mind, brain, and
education? Why now? Mind, Brain, and Education, 1(1), 12.
Goldin, A. P., Pezzatti, L., Battro, A. M., & Sigman, M. (2011). From
ancient Greece to modern education: Universality and lack of
generalization of the Socratic dialog. Mind, Brain, and Education, 5,
180185.
Mangiatordi, A. (2012). Inclusion of mobility-impaired children in
the one-to-one computing era: A case study. Mind, Brain, and
Education, 6(1), 5462.
50 Volume 6Number 1
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