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March 14, 2006 |
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Reading Habits in the Internet Age This week's Denver Post article "Technology Rewrites Rules for Reading" explores how students' reading habits have been influenced by the various online reading that they do. More and more often, teachers, curriculum development, and school literacy programs must search for strategies that will best meet students' needs. These NCTE resources offer one way to solve the problem -- ask students to explore and share their reading habits and their understanding of text in a digital world. Even the youngest students are reading in online environments. Using the ReadWriteThink lesson plan From Stop Signs to the Golden Arches: Environmental Print (E), ask students to identify not online the texts that they see in the community around them, but also the texts they see when they interact with technology. How many students understand where the "Start" button is in windows, for instance? As you explore digital reading, ask students to share their own strategies for reading online and use their responses to inform future instruction. Using the guiding question, "What is reading?" the ReadWriteThink lessons Developing a Living Definition of Reading in the Elementary Classroom (E) and Developing a Definition of Reading through Analysis in Middle School (M) invite students to interact with a variety of different texts as they attempt to uncover the skills necessary to successfully interact with the text. Based upon the discussion that follows, students will create a living definition of reading. As they explore the many texts in their world, encourage students to think critically about how reading habits on the Internet differ from the other media that they read. Defining Literacy in a Digital World (S) offers a similar activity for high school students. Through listing and observation, students identify the many texts that they read and compose -- including books and magazines, television shows, movies, audio broadcasts, hypertexts, and animations. By creating an inventory of personal texts, students begin to consciously recognize the many literacy demands in contemporary society. The College Composition and Communication article "Reimagining the Functional Side of Computer Literacy" asserts that students "need both functional and critical literacies (as well as other types of literacies like the rhetorical and visual literacies involved in Web site design and production)." The essay, an adaptation of a section of the author's award-winning book, Multiliteracies for a Digital Age, reimagines the functional side of computer literacy, arguing for an approach that is both effective and professionally responsible. |