Shift #6: Readers Are No Longer Just Readers

This shift was particularly pertinent because I just learned about the CAAP results from the Assessment Team at MCC.  One of the results compared ACT reading to reading after their freshman year. Believe it or not, reading decreased so much that it indicated that the students were illiterate. How could this be? One person answered that students ignored this question as they just did not want to read it and there was no incentive to complete this volunteer test.

I think if the test had been presented differently, the assessment team would have found better results. I know many college age and graduate school students don’t read for pleasure. Their medium is television, text and online. They read all the time, but not what we consider formal reading. I remember when a teacher told me not to worry that my child wasn’t reading. She asked me: “does he read the sports column in the paper?” She also asked if he read magazines. Wasn’t she the wise one? Well, I think the same today. If a student is asked to participate in a survey, why not change the its venue.  Richardson states “[they] must learn to be critical consumers of … information.” He also states that “reading is a more active undertaking.” To me, the best way to find out their level is to change the playing field.

So, where does this leave me? I don’t teach on a regular basis and when I do, I involve students in activities where they must evaluate the validity of information on web sites. So as they read, they must be critical and be able to communicate their opinion.

My views haven’t changed much because I think technology is the expression of critical thinking. Social networking skills are the tools, but we have to use these tools (whether these are chisel and stone, blackboard and chalk, paper and pencil), to discuss, compare, create, read, and evaluate. This technology encourages participation. Participation is communication. So, is communication the throughway of technology?