I’m reading Born Digital, by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser, both of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. There is not that much in the book that has surprised me, just another source of info on a generation that is different. One part peeked my interest, however, more because of a couple of conversations I have had recently. In the chapter called Learners, they say…
There are a lot of excellent questions to be answered about how kids are learning in the digital envrionment and how that compares to the way they learn in a predominantly analog world. Does reading websites, instead of books and broadsheet-style newspapers, actually change the way peole process information, in the short and long terms? Do kids end up remembering the information that they gather online more or less effectively than they remember matieral from the printed page?
The day before yesterday, when meeting with the administration for a private school I was working with in Atlanta, someone asked about the differences between how students read on the web and how they read in print. I suggested that they look at the work of Donald Leu and his New Literacies Research Team, who are interested in literacy and web-based reading.
When using work-tracking software to record and then analyze children’s operation of the mouse and keys to search for the answer a basic question, the researchers found that there was a great deal of higher order thinking going on. Computer actions indicated that the readers were constantly having to decide on links to follow for alternative texts — and continually re-evaluate their decisions, sometimes deciding to click back.
In the following pages of Born Digital, the authors describe the various reservations that my generation has about our children’s info-habits. Regarding the news, we assume that because digital natives absorb news through the day through various web sites, through their phones, from comedy programs and other unconventional sources, and not reading newspapers and news magazines, then their understanding of current events must be superficial.
We assume that these are biased websites, rather than authoritative organizations like the New York Times or the big television networks. If it’s not outright wrong, then version of the story Digital Natives encounter online must be superficial, many peole fear.
But do we underestimate the depth of our students’ information pursuits and encounters. Paufrey and Gasser say that we do, that we miss the fact that digital natives experience news by interacting with information in constructive ways. They go on to say that natives process information in a three-steps:
- Grazing
- “deep dive”
- feedback loop
They are exposed, according to the authors, to a huge amount of information through the day. It comes in from various favored web sites, news flashes SMS’ed to their phones, other SMSes from their friends, etc. It is a grazing process of picking up tidbits of stories and incorporating them into their word view.
As they encounter something that resonates in some way, they utilize a variety of techniques to dig deeper into the topic, including Wikipedia, Google, news services, and posts on social networks from others who have researched the topic. YouTube may be another source for deeper information as well as powerhouses like CNN, the BBC, the New York Times, The Economist, Global Voices, and Talking Points Memo.
The last phase is not practiced by all digital natives, and, according to the authors, is the part that is the most difficult for traditionalists to grapple with. I’m not sure I agree with this in that I have a long history of writing letters to the editor. But today, these youngsters might write a post to their blog, comment on someone else’s blog or bulletin board. With time and a more creative tilt, they might produce a podcast or post a video’ed plea to YouTube. The difference between my letters to the editor and today’s forms of feedback are their immediacy, and the more real and direct conversation that can result — hence, the feedback loop.
I’m not sure how generally used this three-step process is or even if enough net-gen’ers are engagged in these deeper info habits to generalize in this way. Maybe they have, I just don’t know.
But all of this got me to thinking, back to the original question about reading on the web and reading in print — and I think it’s the period. According to WordNet a Princeton, a period is “a punctuation mark (.) placed at the end of a declarative sentence to indicate a full stop..” It is the end of the sentence. It’s all be said. If you don’t get it, then go back and re-read the sentence.
In a sense, to folks who have been raised on the Net, there are no periods. Certainly there are sentences and hey end in periods. But you can always go further — deeper. You can dig, hyperlink, right-click and dictionary a single word or phrase. Under some cercumstances, you can re-write the sentence, and ask for clarification from the original author.
I just wonder how important this is, how this three-dimensional, ever-expandable, and even alterable reading experience affects our student learners and how they learn. If so, how do we leverage it.
This “grazing” is an amazing skill that many readers have to practice to develop. This is a way for students to find depth. However, it causes students to miss much in literature and poetry. I find that students struggle to recognize beauty in language, perhaps because their primary intercourse with language is for grazing purposes only. You cannot graze a poem!
This is great! Thanks so much. Hope it will continue.
you can get interesting post about web usability and technology on my Web Usability Blog.
Since the earliest “Twist-a-Plot” fiction stories from Scholastic (late 1980s!!) on Apple IIE’s, I realized that reading from start to finish, capital letter to period, was suddenly different when one can randomly choose a variety of “paths” to a variety of “endings”. Combine hyperlinking this way with our present TV, combine hyperlinking within online texts(textbooks!), and suddenly it is the LINEARITY my generation expects of entertainment and reading that is challenged by a new generation that plays videogames over and over to realize all the possible paths to learning something (deemed) important.
I had to decide last night to watch the “theatrical release” or the “Director’s Cut” of a movie I downloaded. Other movies let me choose among a variety of endings.
“Reading” and “Literacy” has changed. Layers and dimensions, multiple paths and possible outcomes, non-linear and multimedia information. Understanding the possible combinations and permutations of ideas created by another.. or a team.. becomes the goal.
Could it be that the programmer of today is the “novelist” of 2050? Will “Reading” become “debugging” and “playing” depending upon the role one wishes to take? I think we have begun a great cultural shift that will make Frank’s thinking about literature and poetry seem old-school.
DARNIT.. I like a good (linear) story.
1. Here’s how I see it: The lack of the “period” in an online text also implies an ongoing conservation, which is how I like my students to read hard copies of texts as well. Not to get too Louise Rosenblatt-ish, but I think that the problem is not that online texts lack a “period” or an ending point, but that students place false ending points on poems, short stories, etc.
In other words, I hope that the deadness of an author doesn’t indicate the end point of a poem. When a student asks a question about Emily Dickinson’s dashes or Langston Hughes’ diction, isn’t he or she basically clicking on a hyperlink, only the response is slower and messier? The online text, in this sense, is emphasizing and speeding up what should already be happening with the ideal reader.
This is my first time reading this blog, by the way, and it is…inspiring, as was your presentation at NECC last summer. Thank you!
When we consider how student’s reading habits are different on the web than in print – I wonder about the extent to which instructors should (have to) teach these new kinds of information gathering / comprehension skills. Is it a mistake to assume that because students are immersed in a digital environment that they have naturally developed / honed these skills? To a certain extent, I agree that we often underestimate the depth of our student’s information pursuits and encounters. (I don’t think it’s entirely superficial) – but I also think we should find ways to design curriculum so students actively and metacognitively deepen their information pursuits – so they’re aware when grazing is sufficient or they need to dive deeper or jump into the feedback loop. But in light of your previous entry (650 mil for ed tech), it may be a while before this kind of curriculum is commonplace.