The Literacy Debate - Online, R U Really Reading?

Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?
NY Times: July 27, 2008 by Motoko Rich

BEREA, Ohio — Books are not Nadia Konyk’s thing. Her mother, hoping to entice her, brings them home from the library, but Nadia rarely shows an interest.

Instead, like so many other teenagers, Nadia, 15, is addicted to the Internet. She regularly spends at least six hours a day in front of the computer here in this suburb southwest of Cleveland.

A slender, chatty blonde who wears black-framed plastic glasses, Nadia checks her e-mail and peruses myyearbook.com, a social networking site, reading messages or posting updates on her mood. She searches for music videos on YouTube and logs onto Gaia Online, a role-playing site where members fashion alternate identities as cutesy cartoon characters. But she spends most of her time on quizilla.com or fanfiction.net, reading and commenting on stories written by other users and based on books, television shows or movies.

Her mother, Deborah Konyk, would prefer that Nadia, who gets A’s and B’s at school, read books for a change. But at this point, Ms. Konyk said, “I’m just pleased that she reads something anymore.”

Children like Nadia lie at the heart of a passionate debate about just what it means to read in the digital age. The discussion is playing out among educational policy makers and reading experts around the world, and within groups like the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association. READ MORE

The Future of Reading - Digital Versus Print: first in a series of articles that will look at how the Internet and other technological and social forces are changing the way people read.

2 interesting takes:

Worry about libraries, not the internetStephen Krashen's Mailing List - Sent to the New York Times, July 27

In "Literacy debate: On R U Reading?" (July 27, Books), Dana Gioia, chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, thinks that there has been a decline in reading ability and it is because of the internet.

There has been no decline. National reading scores for 4th and 8th graders have increased since 1992, and 12th graders have dropped five points since 1992, not much on a test in which the top and bottom 10% differ by 90 points.

So far, studies suggest that internet reading results in more print reading and improved reading ability, as the Times notes.

The real problem is low literacy attainment among children from low-income families, which research shows is related to lack of access to reading material. Let's stop worrying about the internet and start worrying about improving libraries in areas of high poverty.

NEW ONLINE READING SKILLS
Jakob Nielsen Alertbox

Yesterday, The New York Times carried an extended article over two full pages about the potential downsides of online reading:

I read this article twice: Saturday on the website, where it was posted early, and then Sunday morning in the printed paper. I got about twice as much out of reading the printed version. This article was too long and involved for online reading.

Among other things, the article includes a graphic about new skills for online reading. This was prominent in the two-page layout in print, but hidden away in a pop-up on the site. I completely overlooked the link to the pop-up which was in an area dominated by less useful into, such as the ability to make various photos bigger.

The hidden pop-up makes some interesting points. Reading online involves additional skills:

* searching: generating keywords, evaluating SERP hits
* judging the credibility of multiple sources
* synthesizing answers from multiple pieces of info

The article debates whether it's worth teaching these skills in schools or whether kids will pick them up on their own. Last year, I came out in favor of teaching the skills:

However, the most important point is not made in the Times article at all:

** The skills to make full use of the Web are beyond the vast majority of the population. **
Only 13% of the population are at literacy level 4, which is defined as the ability to synthesize across multiple pieces of info and to make inferences. An even smaller percentage (about 5%) can make inferences using complex background knowledge, which is often needed to judge websites and to get full benefits from them.

Of course, the intelligentsia who debate these issues are all among the 5% with superior skills - as are their offspring.

For most children, the situation is worse, since they have not yet developed their research skills. When we actually observe average teens trying to make sense of Web information, we mainly see them fail:

All this said, of course it's tilting at windmills to expect students to only read books and to lay off the Internet. Instead, we should recognize that each media form has its strengths:

Linear media (books, seminars, video, theater) is good for deep learning and artistic experience.

Non-linear media (the Web, networking during conference breaks) is good for quick facts, breaking news, solutions-oriented research, and superficial entertainment (from celebrity gossip to provocative arguments).

Action items to improve the situation:

(1) Design websites for young kids and teens according to the special guidelines for these audiences (very different for each age group).

Read On @ Your Local Library: CalCat or WorldCat

Literacy in the Information Age: Inquiries Into Meaning Making With New Technologies - by Bertram C. Bruce (Editor)
International Reading Association, 2003
~ new literacies and their implications for teachers and students

Adolescent Literacy: Turning Promise into Practice
by Kylene Beers (Editor) - Heinemann, 2007
~ struggling readers, multimodal literacy, teaching in a "flat world"

New Literacies Sampler - by Michele Knobel (Editor)
Lang, Peter Publishing, 2007
~ samples of new literacies: video gaming, weblogging, fan fiction, memes