The Digital Reader


Book Description

The rapidly increasing availability and low cost of e-book technology make it perfect for schools and educators looking to expand their resources for readers. This book introduces the unique features that have established e-books as a powerful, effective learning tool for all grade levels and for special needs students. It includes descriptions and illustrations of the most popular e-book platforms and programs, as well as dozens of practical ideas for using e-books for reading instruction, personal productivity, and curricular enrichment. Brimming with interactive lesson ideas, teaching tips, and online resources, this book is a must-have for teachers in all content areas and library media specialists. Descriptions of the most popular and affordable e-book devices, software, and content for educators Guidelines for accessing the free digital library resources available on the Web and for creating your own e-books using basic software tools Strategies for using the annotation, reference, and hypertext capabilities of electronic text to promote active reading.




Reader, Come Home


Book Description

The author of the acclaimed Proust and the Squid follows up with a lively, ambitious, and deeply informative book that considers the future of the reading brain and our capacity for critical thinking, empathy, and reflection as we become increasingly dependent on digital technologies. A decade ago, Maryanne Wolf’s Proust and the Squid revealed what we know about how the brain learns to read and how reading changes the way we think and feel. Since then, the ways we process written language have changed dramatically with many concerned about both their own changes and that of children. New research on the reading brain chronicles these changes in the brains of children and adults as they learn to read while immersed in a digitally dominated medium. Drawing deeply on this research, this book comprises a series of letters Wolf writes to us—her beloved readers—to describe her concerns and her hopes about what is happening to the reading brain as it unavoidably changes to adapt to digital mediums. Wolf raises difficult questions, including: Will children learn to incorporate the full range of "deep reading" processes that are at the core of the expert reading brain? Will the mix of a seemingly infinite set of distractions for children’s attention and their quick access to immediate, voluminous information alter their ability to think for themselves? With information at their fingertips, will the next generation learn to build their own storehouse of knowledge, which could impede the ability to make analogies and draw inferences from what they know? Will all these influences change the formation in children and the use in adults of "slower" cognitive processes like critical thinking, personal reflection, imagination, and empathy that comprise deep reading and that influence both how we think and how we live our lives? How can we preserve deep reading processes in future iterations of the reading brain? Concerns about attention span, critical reasoning, and over-reliance on technology are never just about children—Wolf herself has found that, though she is a reading expert, her ability to read deeply has been impacted as she has become increasingly dependent on screens. Wolf draws on neuroscience, literature, education, and philosophy and blends historical, literary, and scientific facts with down-to-earth examples and warm anecdotes to illuminate complex ideas that culminate in a proposal for a biliterate reading brain. Provocative and intriguing, Reader, Come Home is a roadmap that provides a cautionary but hopeful perspective on the impact of technology on our brains and our most essential intellectual capacities—and what this could mean for our future.




Reading in the Digital Age: Young Children’s Experiences with E-books


Book Description

This edited book focuses on affordances and limitations of e-books for early language and literacy, features and design of e-books for early language and literacy, print versus e-books in early language and literacy development, and uses of and guidelines for how to use e-books in school and home literacy practices. Uniquely, this book includes critical reviews of diverse aspects of e-books (e.g., features) and e-book uses (e.g., independent reading) for early literacy as well as multiple examinations of e-books in home and school contexts using a variety of research methods and/or theoretical frames. The studies of children’s engagement with diverse types of e-books in different social contexts provide readers with a contemporary and comprehensive understanding of this topic. Research has demonstrated that ever-increasing numbers of children use digital devices as part of their daily routine. Yet, despite children’s frequent use of e-books from an early age, there is a limited understanding regarding how those e-books are actually being used at home and school. As more e-books become available, it is important to examine the educational benefits and limitations of different types of e-books for children. So far, studies on the topic have presented inconsistent findings regarding potential benefits and limitations of e-books for early literacy activities (e.g., independent reading, shared reading). The studies in this book aim to fill such gaps in the literature.




Words Onscreen


Book Description

In Words Onscreen, Naomi Baron offers a fascinating and timely look at how technology affects the way we read.




Proust and the Squid


Book Description

“Wolf restores our awe of the human brain—its adaptability, its creativity, and its ability to connect with other minds through a procession of silly squiggles.” — San Francisco Chronicle How do people learn to read and write—and how has the development of these skills transformed the brain and the world itself ? Neuropsychologist and child development expert Maryann Wolf answers these questions in this ambitious and provocative book that chronicles the remarkable journey of written language not only throughout our evolution but also over the course of a single child’s life, showing why a growing percentage have difficulty mastering these abilities. With fascinating down-to-earth examples and lively personal anecdotes, Wolf asserts that the brain that examined the tiny clay tablets of the Sumerians is a very different brain from the one that is immersed in today’s technology-driven literacy, in which visual images on the screen are paving the way for a reduced need for written language—with potentially profound consequences for our future.




The Readies


Book Description

In 1930, Bob Brown predicted that the printed book was bound for obsolescence. The time has come, he insisted, to rid the reader of the cumbersome book. He invented a machine that would allow one to read books and any text extremely fast and in a hyper abbreviated form. He called these abbreviated texts, with em dashes replacing words: readies. He envisioned sending the condensed texts through wireless networks. The Readies, describes these eponymously named abbreviated texts and his plans for a reading machine, but since he printed only 150 copies, the volume is practically unknown outside of a small circle of scholars. With this new edition, Craig Saper hopes to introduce Bob Brown's Roving Eye Press books to a new generation of readers.




Learning to Read in a Digital World


Book Description

With digital screens becoming increasingly ubiquitous in the lives of children, from their homes to their classrooms, understanding the influence of these technologies on the ways children read takes on great importance. The aim of this edited volume is to examine how advances in technology are shaping children’s reading skills and development. The chapters in this volume explore the influence of various aspects of digital texts, the child’s cognitive and motivational skills, and the child’s environment on reading development in digital contexts. Each chapter draws upon the expertise of scientists and researchers across countries and disciplines to review what is currently known about the influence of technology on reading, how it is studied, and to offer new insights and research directions based on recent work.




Books in the Digital Age


Book Description

The book publishing industry is going through a period of profound and turbulent change brought about in part by the digital revolution. What is the role of the book in an age preoccupied with computers and the internet? How has the book publishing industry been transformed by the economic and technological upheavals of recent years, and how is it likely to change in the future? This is the first major study of the book publishing industry in Britain and the United States for more than two decades. Thompson focuses on academic and higher education publishing and analyses the evolution of these sectors from 1980 to the present. He shows that each sector is characterized by its own distinctive ‘logic’ or dynamic of change, and that by reconstructing this logic we can understand the problems, challenges and opportunities faced by publishing firms today. He also shows that the digital revolution has had, and continues to have, a profound impact on the book publishing business, although the real impact of this revolution has little to do with the ebook scenarios imagined by many commentators. Books in the Digital Age will become a standard work on the publishing industry at the beginning of the 21st century. It will be of great interest to students taking courses in the sociology of culture, media and cultural studies, and publishing. It will also be of great value to professionals in the publishing industry, educators and policy makers, and to anyone interested in books and their future.




The Digital Literary Sphere


Book Description

How has the Internet changed literary culture? 2nd Place, N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature by The Electronic Literature Organization Reports of the book’s death have been greatly exaggerated. Books are flourishing in the Internet era—widely discussed and reviewed in online readers’ forums and publicized through book trailers and author blog tours. But over the past twenty-five years, digital media platforms have undeniably transformed book culture. Since Amazon’s founding in 1994, the whole way in which books are created, marketed, publicized, sold, reviewed, showcased, consumed, and commented upon has changed dramatically. The digital literary sphere is no mere appendage to the world of print—it is where literary reputations are made, movements are born, and readers passionately engage with their favorite works and authors. In The Digital Literary Sphere, Simone Murray considers the contemporary book world from multiple viewpoints. By examining reader engagement with the online personas of Margaret Atwood, John Green, Gary Shteyngart, David Foster Wallace, Karl Ove Knausgaard, and even Jonathan Franzen, among others, Murray reveals the dynamic interrelationship of print and digital technologies. Drawing on approaches from literary studies, media and cultural studies, book history, cultural policy, and the digital humanities, this book asks: What is the significance of authors communicating directly to readers via social media? How does digital media reframe the “live” author-reader encounter? And does the growing army of reader-reviewers signal an overdue democratizing of literary culture or the atomizing of cultural authority? In exploring these questions, The Digital Literary Sphere takes stock of epochal changes in the book industry while probing books’ and digital media’s complex contemporary coexistence.




Skim, Dive, Surface


Book Description

Students are reading on screens more than ever--how can we teach them to be better digital readers?