In Sosnoski’s ‘Hyper-readers and their Reading Engines, I
immediately agreed in that I prefer to read hard copy’s of online texts far
more than reading them on a screen. How come we can stand to stare at our smart
phones all day long, going in and out of apps, reading news, tweets, Facebook,
looking at pictures, etc., but we can’t read long texts? We do pretty much
everything else on our phones, all day long (now I know not everyone can be
included in this, but a good amount of smart phone users are quite obsessed
with their phones, and often I am guilty of this). The argument of whether
schools should go completely electronic with their textbooks is no longer a new
debate, and I’m sure it will take a long time for the transition (if that is
the future of education) to integrate itself.
I really liked the quote by Johnson-Eilola that Sosnoski
used. The description of hierarchal arrangement of reading time really
interested me. It is true we think of reading and digesting what we learn in a
linear, almost constrained way. It is framed, delivered, and then digested by
readers. Now, in the postmodern/hypertext context, we are no longer bound by an
end or a beginning, or research and reading has no bounds.
These new, constructive ways, however, have their flaws. We
take in new information in ways that can be less effective, such as simply
skimming a text. I suppose the choice is in the reader, now. I agree in that a
theory in hyper-reading is not needed, but I think it is just a matter of time
before it is.
Cassidy,
ReplyDeleteIt is true that we spend so much time staring at digitized text that it's silly for us to have this aversion to reading long texts on the computer screen. I'm kind of a paranoid person, though, so my response to this is the following: because we spend so much time staring at screens, it's good for us to get a break every once in awhile, so we should allot a certain amount of time for reading hardcopies of text. My paranoia is due both to the effects of artificial lighting on the psyche and anxiety about the repercussions of becoming posthuman. Neither concerns are substantiated by scientific study or easily articulated, but for me virtual reality is menacing.
-Aaron
"How come we can stand to stare at our smart phones all day long, going in and out of apps, reading news, tweets, Facebook, looking at pictures, etc., but we can’t read long texts?" This is certainly food for thought! The list you provided of "attention-holding" material reminded me of an article I read, which can be found at http://www.ere.net/2013/02/05/social-media-and-short-attention-spans/. According to this article:
ReplyDelete"Social Media Today published an analysis that Facebook posts of 70 characters or less get the most likes and comments; posts from 71 to 140 characters do less well; and the number of likes drops tremendously when posts are more than 140 characters...The visual social site Pinterest virtually does away with words altogether. Though Pinterest allows 500 characters for descriptions, many “pins” lack any descriptions, and some even lack titles. Over on YouTube, a study by Pew found that 29% of the most popular videos were a minute or less in length."
I think the difficulty with reading long texts on the computer has less to do with eye strain and more to do with a lack of focus! And yet, perhaps the attention deficiency has much to do with technology. Whether you are a movie producer or a webpage designer, your goal is to catch the eye of the consumer, and what better way to do this than with fast-paced animation, bright colors, and all elements shocking and new? For example, I've discovered that I have more difficulty watching older movies because they are slower paced and black and white--and this just because I'm accustomed to having my senses overwhelmed while watching a modern film!
If schools transition into fully electronic textbooks I feel as if students will be at a disadvantage. Remember doing research projects were you physically had to look something up in a huge textbook or encyclopedia, well that wouldn’t be an option for future students if we switch to fully electronic text. I know when I type this and when other people read my post they are thinking I’m crazy for saying people will be disadvantaged by not having to learn how to physically look information up, but regardless it’s a skill. I also am against fully electronic school resources because I enjoy turning the pages in a book, and I’m also an avid highlighter. But no matter what I believe electronic textbooks are the way of the future.
ReplyDelete