Is the Future of Reading E-Books?
I attended the School Library Journal Leadership Summit 2010, “The Future of Reading” Oct 22-23 in Chicago, IL. There was a great deal of information shared, with an emphasis on e-books and readers, and what will constitute “reading” as content becomes less and less bound to a physical format. While it would be impossible to share the entire conference, I wanted to share my main impressions with the LREI community.
Here is the website of the conference, including the full Twitter feeds of both days. (Clicking on “Replay” will display the archived Twitter feeds) The schedule and list of speakers can be accessed by using the tabs at the top of the page.
Here are the slide shows from our two keynote speakers:
Stephen Abram, MLS, President, Strategic Partnerships and Markets, Gale Cengage. “Libraries Matter: The Future of Reading in 2020”
Abrams presented a broad, and at time humorous, overview of the e-reading phenomenon and librarians’ roles in it. There’s a ton of information here that can all be accessed through his shared slide show. The main ideas I took away from his presentation is his firm belief that physical books are on their way out, the same as records and cassette tapes, and that’s not something to be afraid of, but a debate to be approached rationally. He also defended video gaming in a way I hadn’t heard before: How is video game problem solving, where students must pick up hints and tips to move to different levels, different from testing a scientific hypotheses over and over? Hmmmm. He also brought up a privacy issue I was unaware of: Amazon documents your highlights and notes every time you log into your Kindle. From my Twitter feed, I discovered this feature can be turned off, but it’s the default. An important concerpt to share with students in talking about online ethics, privacy and social networking.
Our second keynote speaker was Don Leu, Director of the New Literacies Reserach Lab at the University of Connecticut. “The Future of Reading: Misalignment of Public Policy, Assessment, and Instruction in an Online World of New Literacies”
Loads and loads of info here, lots of stats, focusing on students’ online reading comprehension and how to measure literacies beyond print. Some of the ideas I picked out to tweet from his presentation were:
“We are just beginning to understand the complexities of online reading comprehension.”
“No state measures students’ ability to search, communicate effectively w/ email or allows use of w/p to assess writing.”
“Research shows struggling readers perform better online than some of their high performing peers.” (this was especially a revelation, since I think educators usually believe the opposite is true, and shows that assigning online reading may be a way to help support struggling readers.)
“http://www.epals.com/ – Leu belives classrooms need to be connecting, and communicating with other classrooms throughout K-12 to provide kids with global view.”
I’m still mulling over the implications and applications of e-books in our school and library. My overriding impression is that we are still in the mad scramble stage, where vendors, publishers and e-reader producers are rushing products and services into development, fighting to be the top resource/device for students and schools. Until the dust clears, we should carefully evaluate any product we think would be useful for our students before signing on, as there seems to be a new digital bandwagon to jump on everyday, and we obviously don’t have unlimited resources in which to explore each and every one.
Do you have an e-reader? How do you use it? Does your child have one? Do you share books on it? I’m very interested in how the LREI community is using e-reading technology and their thoughts and feelings about the “future of reading” and what that future might look like in our school. Please feel free to leave a comment, or stop and chat with me next time you visit the 6th Avenue library.
Finally, School Library Journal published an article that provides a nice overview of the current status of e-reading
I’ll see you in the library,
Jennifer Hubert Swan, Middle School Librarian