After reading Kearney’s chapter on Girls’ Media and Education and the online article “Online, R U Really Reading?” I do not believe that reading what is written online is comparable to reading printed, published works in terms of literacy but that what is written online is valuable to a young person’s identity as an individual and as part of a greater community.
In the article, the popularity of surfing the net is discussed as it relates to youth media culture. A new tech savvy generation has emerged that likely does not remember life before the internet, having grown up with the convenience of immediacy. I think this is what makes it difficult for young people to enjoy reading books because they’ve become distractible. High art forms are devalued in favor of new technologies because they provide instant gratification, but at the same time offer no real challenge to the consumer. It is when young people become producers that they’re able to gain anything beyond what’s available in “the real world”… online. (Only thinking of America here)
The news article fails to accurately determine the internet's effect on literacy because it does not survey what the children and teenagers are actually doing online, as Sharon Mazzarella does in the first chapter of Girl Wide Web 2.0. They may be playing games, looking at pictures, or downloading music – all which do not provide much, if any, engagement with text. An overall slump in reading test scores combined with the statistics from the Department of Education reflects a decline in literacy among students who’ve used the internet frequently and who do not engage in straight line reading. “According to…data cited in the report, just over a fifth of 17-year-olds said they read almost every day for fun in 2004, down from nearly a third in 1984. Nineteen percent of 17-year-olds said they never or hardly ever read for fun in 2004, up from 9 percent in 1984“. The article states that it is unclear whether or not the students considered what they did online as reading but I believe this question answers itself in that they did not think of it as reading. In a world where these are highly valued skills, we cannot overlook what children are doing online and whether they’re actively or passively participating.
Despite all of this, I agree with the supporters of online education in public schools. The internet is something that was introduced and is here to stay. If kids and young adults are going to use the internet anyway then we ought to spend time showing them how to make the most of it academically, while at the same time trying to persuade them away from image based media like myspace and facebook.
I also agree that internet is here to stay. I agree with one of the views presented in the article that claims that internet reading should be assessed as well. Internet literacy is such a large part of our society and soon I feel it will become, if it has not already, as important to employers as fine arts literacy. Also, I do not agree that the internet is not comparable to printed reading only because our lives, especially the younger generation, revolve around internet literacy. In fact, I heard on the radio recently that some school boards are discussing whether they should include an internet literacy class in the curriculum because of its importance in our lives and the inevitable unfluence it will continue to have in our society.
ReplyDelete