Tomorrow’s New York Times will publish an article titled “Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?“ by Motoko Rich (posted online a day early– another in a long list of reasons why I love online news!). Apparently this is the first in a series of articles that the Times will publish in an attempt to explore how technology is changing the way people read.

Obviously, this is a great concern to newspaper publishers and journalists, because it seems pretty clear that print-based media is dissolving before our eyes. If they don’t or won’t fully adapt to a 24-7 online platform, these news companies will simply die. It’s not just a matter of environmental choices or economics or reader preference, it’s the expectation that readers today have for media that is interactive and highly flexible. The young people interviewed in this article aren’t satisfied with their parents’ ‘one-way,’ linear reading experiences; they want to interact with the news and/or manipulate the narratives. And once you’ve had a taste of that, it’s hard to go back to just reading or watching the news.

One anecdote that I found interesting appears on the last page of this article. The reporter interviewed a teenager who was diagnosed as a child with learning disabilities. He said he finds reading books difficult but excels in online reading:

In a book, “they go through a lot of details that aren’t really needed,” Hunter said. “Online just gives you what you need, nothing more or less.”

When researching the 19th-century Chief Justice Roger B. Taney for one class, he typed Taney’s name into Google and scanned the Wikipedia entry and other biographical sites. Instead of reading an entire page, he would type in a search word like “college” to find Taney’s alma mater, assembling his information nugget by nugget.

Experts on reading difficulties suggest that for struggling readers, the Web may be a better way to glean information. “When you read online there are always graphics,” said Sally Shaywitz, the author of “Overcoming Dyslexia” and a Yale professor. “I think it’s just more comfortable and — I hate to say easier — but it more meets the needs of somebody who might not be a fluent reader.”

Karen Gaudet, Hunter’s mother, a regional manager for a retail chain who said she read two or three business books a week, hopes Hunter will eventually discover a love for books. But she is confident that he has the reading skills he needs to succeed.

“Based on where technology is going and the world is going,” she said, “he’s going to be able to leverage it.”

Hunter’s mother’s comment makes me think of Ken Kay’s concern about whether or not we are teaching young people not only to find information, but to synthesize it and, yes, leverage it. Are we helping students use information to their own personal benefit? To advance their own agendas? 

As an English teacher, I will never give up on books as teaching tools and will expect my students to engage in literature’s one-way, “linear-ness” and possibly even to enjoy the experience. This year they will read Antigone, Things Fall Apart, Animal Farm, All Quiet on the Western Front and more. The authors of these works have important ideas that can only be found by plunging into them and dealing with the non-digital universe that exists when one mind speaks and one mind (can merely?) listen. But I’m also going to find or create online experiences that allow kids to interact with Orwell’s ideas, for example, and to hear multiple perspectives (rather than just the teacher’s). I’m reaching the conclusion that if we don’t work to better integrate literature into the Web 2.0 experience, books might gain a reputation of being so 20th century that — whatever form they take, print or electronic — they won’t matter anymore.

Information is powerful, but wisdom culled from literature provides the context and narrative richness with which to make meaningful decisions. 

(CC Photo credit: A.K. Photography )

Here’s one example. Pretty much the most important questions facing any student the summer before they move away to college are… what dorm will I get, and who will my roommate be. Other nagging questions might be, who will my friends be, what are the other students like, will I fit in, what will my professors be like, etc… It’s all very anxiety producing, as we could sympathize if it were us leaving home and family to live alone with a stranger for the next year. But with Facebook, many of these questions have been answered two months before my daughter even packs her bags. 

Last week at her orientation, it was made very clear that the college is not going to give out roommate information and dorm assignments until some time in August. The kids would just need to be patient. So how does my daughter currently know what dorm, floor, and room she’ll be in? How does she know who her next-door neighbor is and who a half dozen of her floor-mates are?

Social networking.

She joined a group on Facebook consisting of freshmen who will attend her college in the fall. One of the students noticed that when you check the parking pass assignments on the university’s online information network, you can find your dorm and room number — even if you have no intention of bringing a car to college, ever. The information is there for all students. Within minutes, the kids clicked their way over to the parking info. and started piecing together their assignments. Over the last couple of days they have announced them to the Facebook group and are becoming acquainted with the people they will be spending the next year of their lives with, and possibly the next four years! The dots are connecting very quickly as more and more students announce their rooms. I’m not sure the university knows about the back door they left open, but the kids found it, and they’re collaborating.

My daughter has not met her roommate yet but thinks the girls on “her” floor are a fun bunch. She’s seen their prom pics, their graduation photos, read their blogs and seen members of their families. All of this, two months before school starts. Two weeks before any of them were supposed to know anything.

Ken Kay, president of Partnership for 21st Century Skills, says this in this video:

“So the coin of the realm is not memorizing the facts that they’re going to need to know for the rest of their lives. The coin of the realm will be, do you know how to find information, do you know how to validate it, do you know how to synthesize it, do you know how to leverage it, do you know how to communicate it, do you know how to collaborate with it, do you know how to problem-solve with it? That’s the new 21st century set of literacies, and it looks a lot different than the model most of us were raised under.” 

I would say they do, they are and they will!