Shifting to new multimodal texts raises hard questions

Shifting to New Multimodal Texts Raises Hard Questions

• In a new multimodal way of interacting with the material, we are at a loss on how to bridge the gap between the print-based way material is presented and the digital way of interacting.
  • But we can make a starting point an exercise that defines reading and literacy.
  • What is reading in a new technological age?
    • As Mangen and Weel speculated¹, it is a thing of two elements:
      • Human-technology interaction.
      • Embodied processes. But we will dive into the physical aspect really soon.
    • These two questions throw us into deep interdisciplinary aspects of reading.
      • The interaction between the body and the information.
      • The transition from paper to screen forces us to reconsider several serious questions:
        • What distinguishes print-based reading from processing multimodal texts, such as still or moving pictures, images, or even spoken words?
        • In what way does digital information affect cognitive outcomes, retention, recall, and comprehension?
        • How does the reading experience differ between genres (a novel or a poem), or the source (print, screen of a tablet)?
        • Has the concept of reading changed with the substrate? For example, navigating print text is different from the multiplicity of ever-changing hardware and software configurations involved in screen text.
        • Does the growing digital infrastructure change the social position of books and other texts, and of reading in general?
• The one overarching all these questions is this: have changes in the consumption of information triggered the deterioration of reading and literacy skills overall, potentially caused or accelerated by digitization?
  • Have people spent less time reading, or maybe they are reading, in fact, more, but they do it differently.
  • Deep reading practices have become rare and have been displaced by shallower forms of reading.

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Source:: How to talk about books you haven’t read, Why school are boring Friend:: Child:: The reading environment is often left out of the picture, though it impacts reading significantly Next:: The social nature of reading and writing has changed, Reading happens on the edge of two sides of the coin

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Footnotes

1. 1. Mangen A., Weel A. van der The evolution of reading in the age of digitisation: an integrative framework for reading research // Literacy. 2016. № 3 (50). C. 116–124.
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