As an aspiring teacher, I constantly read about the importance of learning how to read and write in a child’s early years. Although the structures of reading and writing are perfected slowly as kids get older, the vitality of opening a book is stressed at a young age. Teachers encourage parents to read out loud as early as two years old, and later encourage parents and kids to read together to become accustomed to vocabulary, phonemes, morphemes and the English Language.
My confusion sparks from the idea of reading. If and when the world does get completely digitalized, does this argument towards technology stretch all the way to the education of younger students? Will five year olds have to begin reading their first books on the web? Or are they excluded from this transformation?
With this said, digital technology has transformed our society’s experience of reading and writing. For me, it all started when my family first got a computer in 2001. The first thing my brother and I started fighting over was the use of Instant Message. That was my first interaction with the digital world, other than listening to music or watching T.V. Sooner or later, by the 10th grade (2005) I wanted my own cell phone. These are all experiences that my parents never went through 30 years ago, so I think technology has greatly altered the desires of kids and adolescents.
Is it something we can change? No. Kids as young as 9 years old are beginning to ask for ipods and cell phones. I am all for the convenience of technology, for I make use of these gadgets myself, but when it comes to Carlin Romano’s “Will the Book Survive Generation Text” I have to agree with her concerns towards this digitalization as well. Publishers and different companies are beginning to shorten texts to make it more reader friendly for students. Is this a good thing or bad thing? Is reading a summary of an epic work the same as reading a book in its entirety? The shortening of books is one problem, the digitalization of all books is another. Romano says, ” Reading a book, however, requires concentration, endurance, the ability to disconnect from other connections,” ( Romano 5), which forms some kind of appreciation and discipline for a scholar. With the use of the web and other compressed versions of novels, students will be lacking the development and understanding of texts that prior generations were influenced by. On the other hand, a digital humanist would argue that digitalized books are for those people who do not want to be stuck on just one text and have the opportunity to use hypertexts , networks and links which offer readers different pathways to take as they read on the web.
As I delve into this topic more and more, I’m beginning to see a division in the audience of the digital humanists. I don’t think that books should be digitalized for the high school years, I think it should be a means of research and extra resources for anyone who prefers the web. People are making this digitalization sound like someone is going to put all their books on the web and then books will be burned and banned by the government. I mean if the use and free access of the web is pro choice than the only people that should be concerned about this accessibility are the authors of these books, who should have an agreement with (let’s say google) if google wants to put their books on the web. The authors and writers should have the last word on this decision. Not me.
In Jorge Luis Borges’s “The Library of Babel” he writes about an infinite library: “I say that the library is unending” ( Borges 1). When I think of the word infinite and I read about the labyrinth in his “Garden of Forking Paths” I can’t help but tie it to the unending amount of sources that are available on the internet. The internet is like a maze, with different networks, links and paths. These different hypertexts and networks are like labyrinths leading to new branches and doors of knowledge. When Borges writes, “I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars” ( Borges 4), for me it symbolizes the birth of the hypertext and internet’s ability to hold texts from the past and the future.
I believe our future will be full of new and improved technologies. I think these technologies will take away from the classical approach to learning. I think these technologies will add to a modern approach to learning. I believe in using different pedagogy in the field of education, therefore as a teacher I would aim for a balance of both worlds.
Best of Both Worlds
6 Responses to Best of Both Worlds
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The digitalization of books/discourse is an interesting concept for an educator–and one that we should grapple with. I find myself coming to terms with this each time I send the bookstore the required reading list for my Freshman class. I always ask myself: Should I require them to buy hard copies? They’re so expensive. But can they really annotate or read actively with a digital text? Is there something special about a physical book? I don’t have any answers yet 🙂
Also, in answer to your question: “Will five year olds be reading their first books on the web?” They already are. Just yesterday there was a CNN special on a school in Maine that just bought ipads for all of their kindergardeners. It showed video of them reading digitalized picture books–interacting with each word and page. I thought it was incredibly interesting. They all seemed very engaged. I’m not sure what the implications are, if any.
I think there is something special about a physical book. If I’m reading for pleasure, I can completely lose myself in a fictional world, to the point that I’m unresponsive to stimuli from the real world. My mother used to get really annoyed with me as a child because if I was reading, I wouldn’t hear her when she spoke to me. If I’m reading for an academic purpose, the experience is both visual and tactile. Learning in general is for me a very tactile experience. I need to take notes – with a pen, on paper – to really remember a lecture. On the same token, I need to highlight, underline, and annotate to really remember and understand what I’m reading.
This kind of completely immersive reading experience – and the lengthy attention span it takes to read and digest Joyce, Hardy, Dickens, etc. – is clearly disappearing. I can see it in myself, just like Nicholas Carr says in “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” And it’s frankly a little terrifying. If I’m reading online, I’m constantly flipping back to check my Facebook or my email. I don’t need to check these things 40,000 times daily, but I can’t seem to escape the compulsion. I can’t remember the last time I truly lost myself in a book the way I used to do when I was a little girl. In fact, I hardly read for pleasure anymore at all – I’m more likely to be surfing the Web or watching Netflix streaming. Not only that, but texting has transformed the way I communicate, too. I’m more likely to respond to a text than a phone call, and where I used to spend hours talking to long-distance friends and family, now I rarely seem to find the time.
I work as a proofreader, so I read for a living, and even at work I always have my Facebook, AOL instant messenger, and personal email open, the window hidden behind my company email program. If my attention falters, I just spend a few minutes cyber-stalking my “friends” online. There is a part of me that hates how much technology has permeated my life, but it is so much a part of our everyday experience at this point that there doesn’t seem to be any escape. While I can see exciting possibilities for the DH, powerful tools like this usually just end up in the wrong hands.
The more I delve into this, the more my optimism falters and the more I find myself wanting to minimize my digital footprint as much as possible, starting with deleting my social networking accounts, online dating profiles, and whatever other unnecessary virtual “communities” I belong to. But then it comes back again to the fact that these things are so much a part of my life now that I don’t really know what I’d do without them either…
Dear Kristin,
I saw that article on the Economist I think. I tried clicking on it and it asked me to be a member of something, so I couldn’t read the whole thing. I think it implies that digitalization is growing faster than we thought. Reading that article and your post reminded me of an elementary school I visited in Belaire over the summer. They had this projector type thing on the board which was connected to a laptop that was operated by touch screen. It basically makes lesson plans and worksheets with the help of a program on your laptop. Once you connect your laptop it projects on that screen. Kids can go on it and play around with words and shapes and basically interact with the devise. I can’t really explain it, but technology (away from the chalk board and marker board) is growing!
I think one of the points that might come out of your post is not just whether book are or not digitised, but how they are digitised.
How are books digitised? Do you mean they are put on the web or there are other ways?
When I hear of teachers using condensed versions of books in a classroom, it makes me wonder what sort of theory or approach toward literature such professors actually adhere to, if any. Maybe such professors adhere to that wacky Reader Response theory, where the original meaning of a text is irrelevant, and all that matters is one’s response to a text. Or maybe such professors don’t even have any actual approach or convictions on how literary texts should be read, analyzed and taught in a classroom. Maybe they just want to earn a paycheck and want to make it as easy and convenient as possible.
I can’t imagine how any professor who truly loves his/her job and genuinely loves and appreciates literature can consider using condensed texts for mere convenience. Granted, I know that there may be valid reasons for using excerpts from a text if, for example, you are trying to convey a historical context or give an overview of the characteristics of a particular literary movement. But somehow I don’t think that is the case in these situations.
Based on Romano’s article, the reasoning behind this is that modern-day students have a shorter attention span and less mental endurance than in the past. But as a professor isn’t it your job to help your students grow and develop, rather than cater to their personal preferences? Then again, maybe I’m just being narrow-minded or overly critical. Please feel free to disagree if you think otherwise.