Reading By the Numbers

by Susan Straight

At back-to-school night last fall, I was prepared to ask my daughter's eighth-grade language arts teacher about something that had been bothering me immensely: the rise of Accelerated Reader, a "reading management" software system that helps teachers track student reading through computerized comprehension tests and awards students points for books they read based on length and difficulty, as measured by a scientifically researched readability rating. When the teacher announced during the class presentation that she refused to use the program, I almost ran up and hugged her.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/books/review/Straight-t.html?fta=y   

 

    Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?

By Motoko Rich

  Books are not Nadia Konyk's thing. Her mother, hoping to entice her, brings them home from the library, but Nadia rarely shows an interest. Instead, like so many other teenagers, Nadia, 15, is addicted to the Internet. She regularly spends at least six hours a day in front of the computer here in this suburb southwest of Cleveland.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/books/27reading.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=reading%0articles&st=cse&oref=slogin

 

  Loud, Proud, Unabridged: It Is Too Reading!

By Amy Harmon  

Some critics are dismayed at the migration to audio books. The virtue of reading, they say, lies in the communion between writer and reader, the ability to pause, to reread a sentence, and yes, read it out loud - to yourself. Listeners are opting for convenience, they say, at the expense of engaging the mind and imagination as only real reading can.

 

  http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/26/fashion/thursdaystyles/26audio.html?pagewanted=1&sq=reading%20articles&st=cse&scp=9

 

Superman Finds New Friends Among Reading Teachers

By Elissa Gootman  

  Some parents and teachers regard comics, with their sentences jammed into bubbles and their low word-to-picture ratio, as part of the problem when it comes to low reading scores and the much-lamented decline in reading for pleasure. But a growing cadre of educators is looking to comics as part of the solution.

 

  http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/26/education/26comics.html?scp=6&sq=reading%20literacy%20articles&st=cse  

 

New E-Newspaper Reader Echoes Look of the Paper

By Eric. A. Taub 

 
The electronic newspaper, a large portable screen that is constantly updated with the latest news, has been a prop in science fiction for ages. It also figures in the dreams of newspaper publishers struggling with rising production and delivery costs, lower circulation and decreased ad revenue from their paper product.

 

  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/08/technology/08ink.html

 

Companies mine growth of MP3 homework

By Madlen Read

  NEW YORK - Lindleigh Whetstone wears headphones as she shoves clothes into the washing machine. Her classmate, Stepheno Zollos, wears them as he shops for groceries. An onlooker might assume the teens are listening to the latest top 40 hit, but they're really learning Spanish.

Whetstone, 18, and Zollos, 17, are students in Kathy O'Connor's class at Tidewater Community College in Southeastern Virginia. O'Connor got an $11,000 grant from the school to lend her students iPods so they can practice their Spanish conversations anywhere - not just sitting in front of a computer.

 

  http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2007-02-06-mp3-homework_x.htm

 

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

By Nicholas Carr

  It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of "reading" are emerging as users "power browse" horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google