Listen and Learn?

I am an acutely visual learner. I read voraciously, highlight and jot notes. I also have a ping-pong ball for a brain so when I'm listening to speech, and do not have visual reference points for it, it is likely my thoughts will be ponging around my head. As a result, when listening to a book or a lecture without seeing the words I think tangentially. I may hear the speaker's presentation of Thomas Jefferson's theory of frugal government and my mind will wander to Jefferson's profligate personal finance, the sale of his slaves after his death and I find myself thinking hard about our founding fathers as imperfect (possibly selectively hypocritical) humans when, in fact, I'm supposed to be following the speaker's intended discourse on today's deficit. Once again, I'm on the wrong ping-pong table. Why this preamble?

I worry that educators and well-meaning technology innovators will rush to provide lessons, "readings" and instruction in audio format to take advantage of teenagers' immersion in the iPod world without providing the needed visual cues for those whose learning style is more visual than auditory. I worry about those students who are like me and are likely to disengage from purely auditory instruction. To educate, we must first engage the student. Numerous theories in educational psychology demonstrate that the more senses engaged in an experience, the greater its memory retention value. New studies also indicate that multi-tasking is mythical and that attention divided is attention at deficit to and disengaged from the tasks at hand. Thus, while I applaud and endorse the adaptation of auditory technology in education, I just need assurance that other sensory stimuli will also be packaged in the lessons to create total immersion and engagement in the lesson, not just the medium.