Learning to Read Digital Text

During presentations the comment: “So you think we should do away with all physical books?” comes up from time to time. Do I? When it comes to non-fiction books I believe at the Middle School and High School level we need to start thinking hard about where we spend our money. On non-fiction books that are outdated before they’re checked out, or take that same money, buy devices, show students how to find quality non-fiction up-to-date information on the Internet within their reading level? I think the latter is a better choice. Now when it comes to pleasure reading….I don’t care what form the material comes in. Books are great…there is a physical connection that some people have with books and so physical books are great…fill your library up with books kids want to read for fun. But here’s the thing…no matter where you are in your own transition into a digital reading world we all read more digitally. Emails, Facebook, News, this blog post (unless you printed it off). Just sit back and reflect for a moment how much of your day is reading digital text. Even if you like to read before bed you probably read more online during the day. Of course this all focused on our generation. A generation that in our childhood and schooling years grew up with book based media. The strategies we were taught, how we read, what we read all goes back to those early years. What happens however when your early years include digital text as much as, if not more than, print text? What happens when you can look not too far into the future and take a pretty educated guess that the majority of your reading life will be done digitally. I’m not saying it’s right…I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’m just saying that’s the way we’re trending. So if we’re really concerned about students and preparing them for their future we need to start teaching them the skills of reading digital based text. When Pennington’s seventh graders took the Smarter Balanced Assessment in English Language Arts on new Chromebooks last April, Pennington didn’t teach them how to use the test’s annotation feature. Students would have been able to highlight reading passages and take notes on the text to help them answer test questions. He thought it was too complicated for them to learn how to use well in...