I know that this course is primarily about technology, so I feel quite the fuddy-duddy in my insistence on books and reading. So sue me; I am a librarian, and I believe that lifelong learning is built on a foundation of reading. Imagine my excitement when I read that “blogging is way more about reading than it is about writing.”
I will freely, even happily concede that the very nature of reading is changing. As Mark Ahlness writes on his blog, “I read so MUCH more now than I ever used to. But it’s a different kind of reading.” My students read–and write–all day long, more so than I did in high school, I would wager, even though I was and am a voracious reader of books. But our students are reading online and writing online and on their phones and other devices all the time.
One of my anxieties about this kind of reading and writing, though, is that it seems to lack depth and focus. One of my favorite commentators and authors, Nicholas Carr, has written a new book called The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. In it, he suggests that the way we read online is reshaping (really, damaging) the way we read at all. “Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words,” he says. “Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a jet ski.” And don’t even get me started on what emailing and texting have done to the quality of writing (LOL).
I have had the same feeling, reading online, as if my brain is literally leaping from one thing to the next, sometimes very productively and in an interesting and informing kind of way, don’t get me wrong. But when I read, really read with attention, I can also feel my brain ENGAGE, like it is slipping into gear and staying there for the duration of the ride.
I am a big fan of Sustained Silent Reading programs, and my students have at least one day of SSR in class every week. The benefits are undeniable, and I hear it from the formerly reluctant readers themselves. A student in my senior English class last semester wrote, “Up until this year, I was not that big of a reader, but now all I like to do sometimes is just read. Reading has become something fun and enjoyable for me, and I am excited to see which book off my bookshelf I will choose next.” (Why is this such good news? Because there are great benefits to free voluntary reading of this sort.)
The mother of another of my students turned up in my office late in the semester and said, “I don’t know what is going on in your class, but my son is all of a sudden reading again, all the time.” And one other student spent about half of the semester flipping half-heartedly through magazines during SSR time (magazines are fine, but half-heartedness is not) until one day she came to class without anything to read at all. I told her she had to read SOMETHING, so she browsed our classroom bookshelves, picked up Twilight and…well, I didn’t have to encourage her to read ever again. She blazed through the four-book series and told me she was up early and late reading, reading, reading. I’ve had some of my best library customers tell me a similar story too (mostly having to do with Harry Potter), that a single deep reading experience transformed them forever. I have not yet had anyone tell me that a blog changed their lives.
I also observed that this class became MORE engaged as the semester went on, not just with SSR but with classroom discussion, projects, essay-writing, everything. And this was a second-semester Senior-level class; I mean, they had already gotten into college and they could have been coasting. I can’t prove that it was SSR that made the difference, but the experience was a pleasant change from my previous second-semester Senior class which did not do SSR. And all I had to do was give this group 20 minutes a week that was sacred reading time.
So while I am intrigued by Mark Ahlness’s inclusion of blogs for SSR in his own classroom (and I plan to try it in mine in the fall), I am concerned about whether blog-reading will be deep, focused, truly sustained reading or just more point and click, more skimming and scanning, the kind of zipping along the surface that Carr describes. Which is fine, if you are on a jet ski. But if you are meant to be diving deep, surface-zipping does not get it done. The real trick will be to know what your goal is, and whether blogging will accomplish it. I am (honestly!) willing to keep an open mind. But also an open book. : )
