I don’t think reading is dead either. Nor do I think we should stop teaching books. But, my, how my definition of reading has expanded in the last few years. I still love the feel of a book, whether it’s a trashy crime novel that gives my brain a break or a Lessig book about our current circumstance. But I also love the feel of my Tablet PC on my lap reading “The Wealth of Nations” and annotating it as I go, just like I would on paper. And I love reading the impassioned mini essays on from bloggers, thinking all the while of how I might respond (because I can, ya’ know) via a comment or on my blog, which changes the experience profoundly. And I love scanning and reading quickly and thinly through all of the aggregated content in my Flock News Reader. And the Skype chats that I have going. And all the rest. God, the stuff I read.

Of all of the great ideas and thoughts here, it’s funny that the one that especially sticks is Kyle’s concept of reading being a “three dimensional experience.” That’s true in a number of ways, from the complexities of hypertext to the challenges of multitasking or multireading. It’s not two dimensional anymore, and I wonder if we should be thinking about how to make Of Mice and Men more of a 3-D experience that makes relevant all of the important ideas that David expresses.

Lots of questions to keep us up at night…

http://preilly.wordpress.com/2006/11/07/changing-world-changing-literacy/
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“As an example of changing literacy, I compared George Washington’s first Inaugural address and Bill Clinton’s.

“AMONG the vicissitudes incident to life no event could have filled me with greater anxieties than that of which the notification was transmitted by your order, and received on the 14th day of the present month. On the one hand, I was summoned by my country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love, from a retreat which I had chosen with the fondest predilection, and, in my flattering hopes, with an immutable decision, as the asylum of my declining years—a retreat which was rendered every day more necessary as well as more dear to me by the addition of habit to inclination, and of frequent interruptions in my health to the gradual waste committed on it by time. ”

-George Washington’s First Inaugural

“My fellow citizens, today we celebrate the mystery of American renewal. This ceremony is held in the depth of winter, but by the words we speak and the faces we show the world, we force the spring.”
-William Jefferson Clinton First Inaugural

A comparison of the readability statistics of both addresses is astounding. George Washington’s address is rated at a 12.0 grade level and Bill Clinton’s an 8.8 grade level. One of the most interesting statistics in this analysis is that Washington used 61.7 words per sentence on average and Clinton about 17 words.

As I read Washington’s first two sentences out loud, I could see many faces in the audience go blank. They would have attacked me if I had attempted to read the entire address. Two sentences was more than enough to make the point. Our literacy has changed so much in the last few centuries that I doubt George Washington could be elected today.

But….to the student who wrote this sentence in an IM session….

“r u smart bcoz i need some1 smart”

….Bill Clinton sounds like George Washington.”
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I found Pete’s commentary and comparisons to be quite interesting and worthy of sharing here! You can read the rest of his posting at the above address.

This posting from Will Richardson I found interesting. Last night at our Thanksgiving get together, I got into a long conversation with a family member who is a long-time high school English teacher and who has begun dipping his toes……

Magical teaching occurs when you expand a horizon, not merely use a limited horizon to access enthusiasm. Exposure to great literature, music, art, theatre not only has NOT lost relevance, it is the most relevant thing you can do, especially in a culture in which pop expression dulls minds and limits potential.

Reading is only dead when we let it be. If we want students to read complex, layered literature then we have to expose them to it. In fact, if we want them to be good stewarts of our planet and repositories of our collective knowledge, we must not be seduced by the idea that the medium is the message. Technology is wonderful, but in the hands of the undereducated it is little more than flashing lights and surface gloss.

I am upset more that my students have very narrow literacies and that, like the various recording technologies of the twentieth century, theirs will be “obsoleted”. I find text messaging to be a very thin slice of the literacy pie tied exclusively to a particular input technology, the cellphone keypad. I am surprised and interested in it as a mode of expression, but I find it is an example of the increasingly commonplace practice of making the user adapt to the technology rather that the other way around. A poem on the other hand is a pretty damned rugged recording technology. It is a literacy which enables and broadens rather than truncates like so many transactional technologies do.

The wild card in all of this is what might be called for lack of a better phrase, “networked literacy”. I don’t think we can predict the complexity that is being unpent at the moment. Add all of the influences you see daily in a simple aggregated dash across the web and I see Web 3.whatever not just lurking in the wings, but damned near onstage

I do think that the larger the skillset/toolbox we provide the better off our students will be. So…get library cards and introduce them to Mr Dewey and Ms. L.O.Congress, visit comfortable bookstores as well as ratty holes in the wall where they can buy paperbacks by the bag or the pound, teach them how to aggregate websites and create their own salons, read literature aloud to all of our children on our damned laps as well as in our laptops, teach readers the joy of smelling a fresh book of their own or of having a PDA which scrolls through Lewis Carroll while in bed with the lights out under the covers just like I used to with a flashlight.

Reading is dead, long live the text and all that implies for now, for the future, for the past. Amen

I request that my students get their own public library card while they are in my class; I find it tragic that many of them have a driver’s license in their wallet first. I educate them about Dewey, but then I teach them how to request books online and access internet databases for research.

Simply put, I think there is room for all of it, and I consider myself lucky to be part of this evolving teach/learn/write/read miasma. After all, I love to read Will’s blog but I also shelled out the $30 to hold his book in my hand.

Have you lost the fun in sitting with a book, turning the pages, feeling the book. Being able to curl up with the book without having to turn it on, open a browser to go to a web page just to read a book as you would with a computer.

Why would you want to read a book on a FDA? It’s impersonal, small and harder to read than the real thing. The same goes for the PC or laptop.

There is more to reading than the text. I’m sorry but I just can’t see how you could lose yourself in a book while reading it on a PDA. There is no way I could use my PDA for that purpose. I would get nothing out of it. Reading from a computer screen versus reading from a hardback novel, I’ll take the hardback any day.

I watch my 21 month old daughter take her books, turn pages, read a word, point out an animal and see her eyes light up while she reads. That’s what our kids are losing. That’s why our kids read well below their grade level across our country.

Just because it can be done on the computer doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done or taught to be done by hand the traditional way.