Online literacy

I used to find it difficult to correct student papers on the computer screen, preferring to print out dozens of pages to correct then with red pen in hand. Over the years my predilection has switched: I’ve come to prefer editing on the computer screen. I rarely print out student work submitted via computer (e-mail or via our seminary online learning system). I correct papers and projects on the computer screen, make annotations, add links to appropriate internet help sites, and then e-mail it back to the student. I’m saving a lot of red ink and paper these days.

And in the past couple of years I’ve become hooked on digital books. In addition to my SONY Reader, which holds hundreds of books and articles (I’m not making that up), I have dozens of other ebooks on my Dell Axim. Yes, I still read ”real” books, and I’m not really convinced about the superiority of one over the other.

However, I do respect that phenomenology affects our thinking and can re-wire our brains. Motoko Rich wrote an interesting article in the New York Times, ”Literacy Debate: Online R U Really Reading?” (July 27, 2008) in which several interesting angles of the debate are explored.

Here are a couple of excerpts:

Clearly, reading in print and on the Internet are different. On paper, text has a predetermined beginning, middle and end, where readers focus for a sustained period on one author’s vision. On the Internet, readers skate through cyberspace at will and, in effect, compose their own beginnings, middles and ends.

Literacy specialists are just beginning to investigate how reading on the Internet affects reading skills. A recent study of more than 700 low-income, mostly Hispanic and black sixth through 10th graders in Detroit found that those students read more on the Web than in any other medium, though they also read books. The only kind of reading that related to higher academic performance was frequent novel reading, which predicted better grades in English class and higher overall grade point averages.

Elizabeth Birr Moje, a professor at the University of Michigan who led the study, said novel reading was similar to what schools demand already. But on the Internet, she said, students are developing new reading skills that are neither taught nor evaluated in school.

You can read Rich’s article here.