How the digital age has changed the meaning of reading, and what it means for the 21st century student. As an avid reader myself, Screenboard's post about smart learning led me to question the impact of online reading materials on people's idea and understanding of a topic.
While technology is an improvement to any learning experience, the process of learning depends primarily on the comprehension of information. Reading is a pivotal skill in life. Whether one reads for pleasure or in the pursuit of knowledge, the act itself has profound effects on people.
All traditional educational institutions place a heavy emphasis on reading in order to succeed. However, despite the incentive of institutional success, studies show that schools and higher education need to stress that this is more than just a skill to succeed in professional life.
Reading is an important milestone in early childhood development that is often grossly underestimated by caregivers. It is an essential tool to develop language, listening skills, an individual personality, comprehension of both abstract concepts and tangible information, along with a healthy foundation to develop writing skills.
Reading skills lay the foundation to lifelong learning, and this certainly includes educational success. Studies have shown that reading at a university level requires students to have prior reading experience to begin with. This does not mean reading just the textbooks and other learning materials, but rather the habit of reading itself, cultivated over time. These habits are cultivated at a early age, when children are consistently exposed to books and other reading material based on the topics they are interested in.
However, it is sadly considered an abstract activity, through which the reader imagines whatever they are reading about within their mind. In reality, it is quite the opposite. As people read their brain's neural networks weave together the circuits of memory, emotions, motor co-ordination, vision, spoken word, and even semantic differences. Each of these are highly physical processes which contribute to a person's holistic development. With the advent of screens as a reading platform, scientists suggest that "deep reading" - i.e. reading which develops reasoning, insight, empathy, and multiple perspectives - is diminishing.
While other neural circuits are hardwired into the human blueprint, human beings develop their "reading" circuits only through the process of deep-reading. And this process relied on the tangibility of a text or piece of information. The tactile nature of paper-based reading materials meant that the process of reading was a combination of abstract and physical experiences which created neural pathways incorporating other humanistic functions. The digital reading process diminishes the tangibility of information, which decreases the chances of such connective circuits developing, and result in somewhat poorer qualities like memory and empathy.
Although judging by the rapid pace of screen reading, the issue of forming these neural circuits could be solved as human beings evolve. By adapting to the technology we create, people have the biological capacity to change how knowledge is transferred, and even how much.
This distinct ability to create and adapt through trial and error has brought the species as far as print media could have. Now, I think it is time to readapt and situate ourselves in the learning experience of the 21st century.