This morning, I am honored to present for the College Reading Educators during one of their session at the New York State Reading Association’s annual conference. My talk will focus on the idea that, without question, learning continues to change in the twenty-first century. Higher education faculty have always valued the teaching of reading, writing, and thinking — and see that our very notion of what it means to be literate is evolving. How, then, do we enhance and extend traditional literacy practices in this digital age? This brief talk will provide some background on Dr. Hicks’ work as a teacher of digital writing, connected reading, and critical thinking for both undergraduate and graduate students, many of them pre- and in-service teachers, at Central Michigan University. Links from the presentation are embedded in the Google Slides and include the following:
This afternoon, partially as a way to procrastinate from my own writing and partially because I was genuinely interested in the invitation, I participated in an “open review” of Remi Kalir and Antero Garcia‘s forthcoming manuscript, Annotation. Their open review process will continue through August 23, 2019, so jump in! They request that commentary adhere to the following, all good advice for any scholarly dialogue:
Civil. We can disagree. And when we do so, let’s also respect one another.
Constructive. Share what you know. And build upon ideas that are relevant and informative.
Curious. Ask honest questions and listen openly to responses.
Creative. Model generative dialogue. Have fun. Contribute to and learn from the process.
Having read hundreds of academic articles in the past 20 years, as well as offering blind peer review for dozens more, as well as blind reviews of probably two dozen academic books, I thought that this would be interesting. (And, again, I was procrastinating on my own writing, so an engaging intellectual task that can carry me away and still feel like I am getting work done is always welcome). Here are a few things I learned while reviewing their book which, again, you, too, can contribute to through August 23rd.
My Stance as a Reviewer
When I offer peer review to academic articles and books, I am typically using the “track changes” and commentary features in Word or, in some instances, by offering comments and edits on a PDF (my favorite tool for doing that is the iOS app Good Reader). I typically frame these comments as direct suggestions to the author(s) of the article/manuscript I am reading, and I engage in a professional, yet conversational tone.
With my review of Annotation today, I think that I maintained some of that approach, yet I knew that my comments would be captured, in perpetuity, in Kalir and Garcia’s public version of the document. While I didn’t hold back with questions and concerns, I did realize that I changed my tone. Whereas I would try to be explicitly clear in comments and questions (perhaps even providing examples of what I was aiming for with unclear writing) in blind review, I didn’t want that to be part of the public record.
For instance, in the example below, I offered a comment that could spark further dialogue amongst others reading the text, pushing toward some broader implications for teaching and learning. At other points, I was replying to the comments already made by others, and I would specifically say something like “I agree” or “Along these lines.” Also, at points, I directly wrote to Kalir and Garcia in ways that I could do so with colleagues I know, and would be comfortable saying in front of a group of others.
My Commenting Style in an Open Setting
Yet, still, it felt strange. In the first few chapters, there were some other annotations/ors, yet they fell away. Even those that remained were offering suggestions for links, not the generative kinds of peer review that (I hope) I have always aimed to offer in the peer reviews that I complete. For instance, I would describe problems and ask questions like:
I may simply not be reading this right, but making the comparison of submitting an expense report in relation to the openly annotated future just didn’t ring for me here. Sorry, but perhaps you could find a different example?
This is an interesting example, but I don’t know that it fully draws out all the ideas that you mentioned above related to “shifting social norms, changing financial and organizational incentives, and evolving scholarly practices.” Perhaps you could reorganize around — and particularly elaborate upon — these three ideas in relation to SciBot?
This is an important, if technical, point, and deserves some elaboration. Why is it important that some are built into the browser, whereas others stand alone. And, for that matter, why have you not mentioned OneNote, Evernote, Google Keep, or SimpleNote anywhere in the text, and especially here before you launch into the important questions you pose below?
By the end of the process — which took me just as long as any other book review — I began to wonder/wander, leading me to other directions.
Reflecting While Reviewing
Of course, during a normal review, the kinds of internal dialogue that I have with myself may make it into the first draft of my comments, but I usually do some editing before a final draft heads off to the editor. Here, I figured that Kalir and Garcia’s invitation to be civil, constructive, curious, and creative would welcome some of these thoughts.
As I went through the process, and saw fewer and fewer reviewers in subsequent chapters, I got discouraged. While this is no fault of the authors, and I know that they have extensively shared their open manuscript, welcoming reviews, it does make me worry a bit about the hive mind, and whether the power of collaboration and collective intelligence is, perhaps, not as powerful as we might hope. A few of my musings, especially as they relate to why scholars may choose not to participate in an open review:
This [vision of social annotation and scholarship] is aspirational, and I appreciate it. Yet, I think that you can elaborate more on what actual changes would need to happen to make it a reality. Be specific, and talk about faculty workloads, department/college T&P requirements, and the ways in which “open” is still perceived as subpar.
And, yet, there still seems to be reluctance, or at least lack of widespread acceptance [of open review]. For instance, in your attempts to make this manuscript open and accessible (which I applaud), I am still wondering how many total scholars will participate. Even for those of us who saw the invitation to begin with, a gentle nudge was in order for us to participate. And, in the end, I don’t know that my review of this manuscript will “count” on par with doing a review for an established journal or publisher when (and if) I include it in my promotion materials. Of course, for me at least, this doesn’t matter as much as it would to a junior faculty member who needs to decide whether to spend a few hours trying to write her own work, or to participate in a “normal” editorial review board/process as a blind reviewer for an established press/journal. Both of those actions are rewarded in the academy. As much as I respect Remi and Antero (and that’s why I am doing this annotated review), the simple fact of the matter is that I am doing this because I care, not because it will “count.” These are part of the material reality of academe, and I don’t know how we will change that, even with open annotation and peer review. At the end, there is only so much time in the day…
So, I have held off until now, but I have to ask… and only partially in a cynical manner… Like the tree falling in the forest, does an annotation really make a sound (ripple, impact, effect, etc)? That is, I appreciate your utopian vision, yet I wonder if you might want to reign it in a bit here. Sorry… not trying to pop the bubble, especially after nearly two hours of reviewing and annotating your manuscript, but I am just being realistic. The first few chapters had a few annotators. Now, here at the end, it is just me. And you two, as the authors. Are we really connected to a “robust information infrastructure?” Or, are the three of us walking alone in the woods?
In the end, I appreciate the opportunity to do this review, and to pause here to reflect on the process. I struggle both with how to structure class discussions in digital spaces as well as how to be a social scholar, so reading Kalir and Garcia’s manuscript was serving many more purposes for me than merely procrastinating on my writing. I am hopeful that the ideas I have offered to them (and those who might continue to annotate over the next month) are helpful. And, of course, I will continue to think about practices of annotation in my own scholarship and teaching.
As noted in the first post in this series, I’m trying to unpack some of my daily digital reading habits. In addition to the (semi) automated daily newsletter that comes from social media updates, there are also a regular stream (sometimes a flood) of newsletters that come from various groups.
I generally categorize and read these types of newsletters in two ways: “headline” style updates from aggregation sites like EdSurge News (agree to have them use/sell my data based on the privacy policy) and SmartBrief (agree to have them use/sell my data based on the privacy policy). Then, there are specific, often thematic issues from groups the Connected Learning Alliance (donation), Common Sense Media (donation), NCTE’s Inbox (professional membership), ILA Daily Blog (professional membership), and Edutopia (donation). More recently, I have subscribed to Chalkbeat (donation), too.
With the daily headline-style of newsletter (EdSurge and SmartBrief, in particular), I generally skim and may pick one or two pieces to delve into more deeply. The good news for these types of newsletters is that, with my “normal” news consumption of NPR (donation) and the New York Times(subscription), many of the links go back to these sources and I have already read/heard them anyway. These aggregators do send me out to other sites, including their own, to see a bit more of the education-related news of the day. From these sources, I’ve also been pushed out to Slate’s education reporting a few times, and I am thinking about subscribing there, too.
One that I appreciate, generally focused on Michigan, but touches on national news, too, is Robert McClain’s Student&Educator newsletter. He used to request a subscription fee (which I paid for at least a year), but it appears as though it is now free (as I haven’t re-upped my subscription in quite some time). I am not even sure how I ever got signed up for this one (no easy way to do it on the site), and it is probably best to email McClain himself to get put on the Constant Contact list.
Then, there are the organizational newsletters. I do appreciate and read these in as much detail as I can, just to have a sense of what is going on in the organization (at a 30,000-foot view at least) and to better understand what other professionals with similar interests are reading and blogging about. Also, deadlines. Knowing when conference proposals are due is pretty essential. While some are little more than advertisements for upcoming conferences or online events, many of the organizational newsletters point me to interesting tidbits that I would have missed in my regular social media feed or, perhaps, echo what I’ve already seen in my feed.
None of this, of course, is perfect. Some days, like over the holidays here, I still have time to read and digest a good bit of news (general and work-related). Other days, my feet hit the floor in the morning, my head hits the pillow at night, and I barely remember what happened in between. Reading, on those days, is a bit tough. Yet, the newsletters — even just skimming the headlines — help me stay in touch. If nothing else, I can pop open a few tabs and save them for reading at a later time (which I will need to discuss in terms of using Zotero, but that is another post).
And, a final note. If it isn’t obvious already, I have tried to indicate above how I pay for these services. Good journalism, even in aggregate, isn’t free. I am either giving away my data (and some privacy rights), or paying for the service, or a bit of both.
With the magic of RSS and automated workflows, the daily newsletter has become a tool for many businesses, organizations, and individuals to update their followers. There are countless numbers of these newsletters, and just as many opinions about whether or not they are effective. For the moment, I’ll leave those debates to others and say that, for me, a small number of daily newsletters from a few trusted ed tech individuals helps me stay on top of ed tech and literacy trends. (I’ll discuss organizational email updates/newsletters in a later post.)
There are two that I will focus on for this post, one an ed tech advocate (Tony Vincent) and one an ed tech skeptic (Stephen Downes). This brings (some) balance to my daily perspectives on ed tech, and it is interesting to think about how each blogger approaches the task of creating the newsletter. It also raises important questions for me about the diversity of ed tech opinions that I get exposed to on a regular basis, and reminds me that I need to pop my filter bubbles from time to time. Still, these are two newsletters that represent my daily intake, and I want to explain how I read each one.
Snapshot of Tony Vincent’s Nuzzel Newsletter
To begin, Vincent’s Nuzzel Newsletter, much like my own, appears to be an automated collection of his own blog posts and other items that he has accessed via social media. According to Nuzzel, the services offers “personalized news discovery and curated newsletters for busy professionals, via web, mobile apps, messaging bots, and email newsletters.”
When I first started using Nuzzel two years ago (first issue: 12/31/16), I took time each night to actively curate my own newsletter, prioritizing specific news items and adding (light) commentary. Since then, I’ve fallen off the wagon, and the issue auto-generates. I do get some feedback from colleagues who subscribe, so I know that what I share matters, and this exercise again reminds me that we are all constantly creating digital identities, and I need to remember that Nuzzel is part of mine.
Back to Tony Vincent’s newsletter as an example… as a fifth grade teacher and ed tech advocate, I do subscribe to his newsletter and have it delivered to my inbox each day. While I could, potentially, go into the Nuzzel app or have a tab open in my browser for daily check-ins, I still live my daily work life via Gmail, so having the newsletter pop up in my inbox makes it real. The snapshot below gives a sense of what the newsletter looks like (though this is the web version, from the link I clicked on the email version). A few points to note, many of which might be obvious, but are important to consider from both UX and “reading strategy” perspectives.
The role of the hyperlink to the original article, the name of the original source, the date, and the image all appeal to the reader in terms of basic reading and skimming strategies. If I were looking at a newspaper or a non-fiction book, these would be the types of things that my eye would be drawn to, and the types of things that we would instruct students to look for, too. By having the date of initial publication for each item, I can make some quick judgments about currency (though “older” does not always mean worse, or better). Also, by clicking on the link (from email at least), a new tab pops open. This isn’t quite the same when reading from the “web” version, as it moves from the Nuzzel page to the link in the same tab. Multiple tabs… yet another strategy that I employ when reading (and something I could force using an extension if I wanted to mess with it).
Back to the content of the newsletter. Vincent sometimes has references to his own blog, and other items are posted without commentary. Again, I can’t throw stones here, because my Nuzzel feed is similar. Sometimes just having the links, without commentary, is enough. When I see that Vincent has posted a link to an article, and then I see that same link coming from others, I can make a judgment about whether I want to spend dedicated time reading it (as compared to just getting the snapshot view of it). So, reading his newsletter is a quick task, and I admit that I often don’t even scroll through it, just peeking at the top 2 or 3 articles mentioned. I am sure that readers of my newsletter may read in a similar manner.
Snapshot of OLDaily by Stephen Downes
By contrast, Stephen Downes (personal Twitter and OLDaily Twitter) offer me a different kind of insight on ed tech news. Though the scrolling screenshot here doesn’t really capture it all that well, you can see that Downes posts links to about 5 or 6 articles each day, but the text on the side is not an excerpt from the article itself. Instead, it is Downes’ commentary, which I find to be both humorous and insightful.
Clearly drawing from his critical and philosophical stance on ed tech, Downes shares his thoughts on almost anything even tangentially related to educational technology, including commentary on a commentary about the Netflix sensation, Bandersnatch:
Netflix’s Bandersnatch is an example of the branched scenario format that has been in use in e-learning for a number of years. They’ve done a very nice job of it, adding some new twists (such as remembering earlier chances to add variability (cereal choices, music choices) in later scenes. On the other hand, a lot of the choices felt forced, as the program kept directing me back to the main storyline. The article says there are five outcomes; maybe, but I would imagine we’re all getting more or less the same experience. Anyhow, good article on an interesting experiment.
Needless to say, I spend a bit more time on Downes’ newsletter each day, often popping open multiple tags in the process. How he is able to read — and write — so much each day is a bit beyond me, though it is aspirational (as I am aiming to reach a goal here in 2019!). Each newsletter does feel the same in the sense that the format remains consistent, but they are each unique. Because of his commentary, you can tell when he is feeling optimistic… and when he is feeling ornery.
In each case, I find value in the newsletters. Some days, even when opening the tabs to read later… well… I just don’t get a chance to read everything later. But, in conjunction with other reading that I will describe in my next few posts, these two types of newsletters provide me with a sense of the ed tech zeitgeist on a daily basis. I trust the sources, for different reasons, and value what each can offer.
With that, I am curious… what are the ed tech/digital literacy related newsletters to which you all subscribe?
What am I missing that I should be getting in my inbox each day?
In order to rethink my relationship with ed tech, I need to start by thinking about what my current relationship entails. My goal is to blog for about 30 minutes a day, so this creative constraint/daily deadline will keep me focused. For this week, I want to focus on how I read about educational technology (and, by extension, digital reading, new literacies, and other related topics). Of course, I try to stay on top of the normal news, too, and sneak in some pleasure reading from time to time. Yet, I am going to focus on the aspects of my daily patterns, mapping out an arc of what I do in a typical day in order to stay on top of ed tech news. In short, my reading patterns look like this:
Wake up/breakfast time: Quick scan of social networks, especially if I have been tagged, and to see what Nuzzel has automatically generated in my own daily newsletter (which is intertwined with my Twitter)
Daily triage of the inbox: here, I parse out email updates that I want (as compared to the countless promotions sent by the companies and services I use). There are three general genres of email updates that I pay particular attention to. While the amount of time I spend on any one of these items on any given day may be small, they each offer some insights that are useful and often having me clicking open anywhere from 2 or 3 to 8 or 10 new tabs for later reading.
From an individual update/daily newsletter genre, I am subscribed to Stephen Downes and Tony Vincent, as well as the ISTE Connect forums, among other listservs. Also, Bryan Alexander posts regularly, though what he shares is not a newsletter, it is a substantive, almost-daily post.
And, from the weekly newsletter genre, I get quite a few, including Monica Burns, Tom Liam Lynch, and Doug Belshaw. There are more, but those are the ones that I still have marked “unread” and want to dig into (which is a problem).
I then usually attack the day’s email, which, for purposes of this series of blogs posts, I will not count as “reading,” since it is quite utilitarian.
Later in the day, depending on the academic work that I have at hand, I will do additional reading, returning to the tabs that I have opened and diving into Google Scholar or my library database. Sometimes those tabs stay open a long time. I’ll write through that problem more, too.
Over the next week, I will explore each of these sources in a bit more detail. I will also describe some reading strategies that I use, hearkening back to a series of posts that I did while Kristen Turner and I were working on our Connected Reading book (here, here, and in a six-part series: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6). I also want to make a concerted effort (as I have many times over the years) to get back into RSS reading, and to think about how I use Zotero to keep track of my reading. I am thinking that there must be a better way to do all this, and perhaps I can think through it with a concerted effort in January. And, with that, I have hit my 30 minutes(+). So, I will look forward to writing a bit more, later in the week, about how I am using these reading practices and what I may be able to do different in the year ahead to be more focused and efficient (at times), as well as more substantive and with intention (at other times).
[b]logging can help develop your students’ digital writing by combining traditional writing (text) with a digital platform (sharing online), along with the opportunity to incorporate other forms of media-making.
My role for the bootcamp will be to provide a brief, asynchronous presentation called “Rethink the Link.” And, in working with KQED’s Jordan Stewart-Rozema to prepare my session, I’ve been (re)thinking (over) a number of ideas.
In short, I want to help teachers consider when, why, and how we invite students to create hyperlinks in their digital writing, in addition to considering the typical questions of where, what, or to whom they will be linking.
To that end, I’ve been gathering up a few resources, beginning with Vannevar Bush’s essay “As We May Think” and his original conception of the memex as
a future device … in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.
From the perspective of “link” as a verb, we will think about what a writer does by including a link, considering the kinds of reaction(s) she might want from her readers. As a noun, we will consider how the connection to other ideas serves the writer by invoking the broader academic conversation.
If you are interested in thinking about linking — and blogging more broadly — then there is still time to sign up. See you in the KQED Bootcamp community!
Based on the book that I wrote with Kristen Hawley Turner, Argument in the Real World, one of the tools/strategies that I have been sharing in workshops this past year is the “MINDFUL” heuristic for readers and writers as they engage in academic arguments with, through, and about social media.
When we were wrapping up the book in early 2016, even before “fake news” and “alternative facts” became a phenomenon, Kristen and I designed this heuristic to fill in the gaps that we felt existing website evaluation checklists were missing.
In short, those checklists and other tools were created in the early days of the web when we – as educators and information consumers – generally placed the onus of responsibility on the creator for being accurate. This, of course, was a holdover from our view of the printed word having gone through extensive review and editing in order to be published. The power of books, periodicals, encyclopedias and similar sources came from the fact that they were curated by experts.
Yet, with the abundance of material emerging on the information superhighway, educators, especially librarians, knew that careful editing and peer review weren’t happening all the time. We needed to create a way for students to understand that some creators were thoughtful and accurate, while others were misleading or creating an outright hoax. So, we held those creators to task by engaging with such checklists as readers so we could bring a critical eye to what we were reading/viewing. We also encouraged students to never trust a blog, or Wikipedia, or other sources that were not well-vetted. (Of course, we have since changed our tune. A bit).
At any rate, website evaluation checklists worked okay, for a while at least.
However, this was before the vast majority of us became content creators in the Web 2.0 era. Blogs, wikis, and other forms of media were being created at a constant pace and, unfortunately, with different audiences, purposes, and degrees of veracity.
More recently, through social media, we are all creators, curators and circulators. Our roles as writers have changed. The role of the reader – as someone with agency and perspective in the online reading and writing process – also needed to take responsibility for the types of arguments being created and perpetuated.
What Kristen and I wanted to do, then, was to rethink this instructional strategy of website evaluation. We came from the stance of helping students –as both readers and writers of social media – to recognize that (borrowing from Lunsford, Ruszkiewicz, and Walters’ book title) everything is, indeed, an argument.
Retweets and likes are, despite the disclaimers, endorsements. And, by extension, arguments. The way that we see evidence presented in social media matters because it will inform our own stance, as well as the perspectives of others with whom we engage. We create arguments through the act of liking, retweeting, reblogging, or otherwise endorsing, let alone when we create our own updates, tweets, or blog posts.
Rethinking the traditional website evaluation tool meant that we need to consider the challenges that new media, new epistemologies, and new perspectives all bring. In other words, it was no longer enough to simply read the “about” page, do a WHOIS lookup, or even try to understand more about the language/discourse being used on the page/post.
We needed something different. Hence, MINDFUL.
We wanted to help teachers, in turn, help their students slow down just a bit – even a nano second before retweeting, or a few moments when crafting an entire post – and to think about how arguments in digital spaces are constructed, circulated, and perpetuated.
I think that MINDFUL is helpful in doing just that. Below, you will find slides that I have been using over the past few months as well as links to additional resources I discuss in the presentation.
Monitoring our own reading and writing means that we must be aware of and account for Confirmation Bias. Of course, helping students (and ourselves) to do that requires a number of strategies, which are outlined in the rest of the heuristic.
Identifying the claim means that we must separate the opinions that someone offers from the facts that may (or may not) support the claim. A refresher on Fact vs Opinion from Cub Reporters is a useful place to begin, even for adults.
Noting the type of evidence and how it supports the claim is useful. As a way to think through different types of evidence – In the claims they can support – it is worth taking a look at the Mathematica Policy Research Report “Understanding Types of Evidence: A Guide for Educators“
Focusing on the facts requires us to check and double check in the ways that researchers and journalists would. Despite claims to the contrary from those on the fringes, sites like Snopes, Politifact, and FactCheck are generally considered to be neutral and present evidence in an objective manner. Also, there are lots of objective datasets and reports from Pew Research.
Understanding the counterargument is more than just seeing someone else’s perspective and empathizing/disagreeing. We need to help students understand that arguments may not even be constructed on the same concept of information/evidence and in fact some of it could be one of the 7 Types of Mis- and Disinformation from First Draft News.
Finally, leveraging one’s own response is critical. Understanding the way that fake news and other propaganda is constructed and circulated will help us make sure that we do not fall into the same traps as writers WNYC’s On the Media provides a Breaking News Consumers Handbook for Fake News that is, of course, helpful for us as readers and viewers, but could also be a guide for what not to do as a writer.
My hope is that these websites/resources are helpful for teachers and students as they continue to be mindful readers and writers of social media.
Tomorrow, Wednesday, February 22, 2017 at 6:00 PM EST, join my colleague and co-author, Dawn Reed, and me as we participate in an “Annotation Flash Mob” on the preface for our book, Research Writing Rewired. We’ve been invited to participate in this opportunity through Dawn’s collaborations with the Marginal Syllabus Project.
The Marginal Syllabus team is part of the larger Hypothes.is Syllabi Project, which “leverages web annotation to collect primary source documents by theme and organize communal conversation of those documents.”
Here is a bit more from the Marginal Syllabus’s “About” page:
The Marginal Syllabus seeks to advance educator professional development about education in/equity through the use of participatory learning technologies. We are a dynamic, multi-stakeholder collaboration among:
Hypothesis, a non-profit organization building an open platform for discussion on the web
Aurora Public Schools in Aurora, CO, and in particular educators and administrators associated with the LEADing Techquity research-practice partnership
While this group will work together for one hour tomorrow night, I am looking forward to seeing how the conversations Dawn and I had while writing will come alive with the Hypothes.is annotations of other educators.
From their blog, it also seems that the conversations might keep going on, and I am interested in seeing how that unfolds over the days and weeks to come.
Many thanks to Brooke Cunningham, creator of the LitBitpodcast and a doctoral student in the University of Tennessee PhD in young adult literature program, for inviting Kristen Turner and me to share our thoughts on Connected Reading with her listeners. Please listen to and share the episode!
Recently, a friend of Kristen’s on Facebook posted a GIF that showed the evolution of a desk. In 1980 the desk was covered with items: books, newspapers, magazines; a fax, phone, stapler and tape dispenser; a rolodex, clock, globe, calendar, and bulletin board; and a computer and phone. One by one the items on the desk evolved – and disappeared, becoming an app on the computer – as a scrolling mast of years advanced. By current day, only a computer full of apps and a Smartphone remained on the desk.
The GIF represents the possibilities of a digital world. We can, if we choose to do so, conduct our professional and personal lives entirely on, with, and through devices, and a recent Pew study suggests that more and more teenagers and adults are making the choice to go digital. What does this transformation mean?
As teachers of reading and writing, we recognize that our own desks – and those of our students – are markedly different than they were even just a decade ago. We accept that, as the National Writing Project asserts, “digital is,” and we wonder how we can help adolescents to become critical readers in a world where they encounter short-, mid-, and long-form texts through their devices on a daily – and even hourly – basis.
For us, reading is not an isolating activity. Digital tools allow individual readers to connect to a network of readers; texts of all kinds can be shared quickly and widely. Digital tools also allow readers to share their reading experiences – before, during, and after – with others. In a digital world, reading is visibly social.
This model suggests that readers encounter texts in a variety of ways. They may receive them from others, somewhat passively, or they may actively seek out new reading material by surfing without much intention, stumbling through sites with some intention, or searching with focused intention.
How do we help students develop their comprehension skills as they encounter and engage with Kindles and Nooks, RSS feeds and Twitter, hypertext fiction and digital textbooks? How do we help them to read critically in a world where information flows constantly? And perhaps most importantly, how do we help them to leverage the possibilities within a network of readers?
As we consider these questions, we look forward to the #engchat session on October 5, where we will discuss what it means to be Connected Readers.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
