How's your "Digital Literacy"?

The answer to this question may be revealed in whether you'd prefer to read this fascinating New York Times article online at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/books/27reading.html?_r=1&oref=slogin or read the hardcopy folding version of the July 27th NYT in the library's periodical section.

Entitled "Literacy Debate: Online RU Really Reading?", writer Motoko Rich examines whether Internet reading and Web surfing count as true "reading". Experts certainly disagree, but there's no doubt that many in the younger generation spend more time at websites than they do immersed in books. One teenager describes reading (and writing commentary) on the Internet as a conversation, not the one-way direction of a book. Another likes choosing her own endings on web stories---if she doesn't want the character to die, as he might at the end of a novel, she can let him survive and prosper!

Companies like ETS (distributors of the SAT) are testing a digital literary test called iSkills at some U.S. colleges and high schools and some educators say that students with learning disabilities or less developed reading skills can read better on the Web because it's less language-orientated than books and has lots of sounds and pictures and non-linear paths to explore.

One fact not in debate is that those who read for fun score significantly higher on standardized reading tests, that reading skills are ranked highly by prospective employers. and that high scorers will earn higher incomes.

A professor at JMU advocates for both digital literacy and book reading: "I think they need it all." I agree and would venture that it goes both ways: sometimes the Web leads you to read a good book and sometimes a good book leads you to investigate further on the Web! It should never be either/or: online and print sources can and do complement each other and our students should be fluent in both methods.