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The use of digital books and textbooks has exploded during the pandemic, and it may only be a matter of time before all educational publications move online. That’s why it’s so important to continue to make digital reading better for students, says literacy teacher Tim Shanahan. Instead of trying to book digital technology, Shanahan says, “[engineers] It is necessary to think about how to produce better digital devices. Technological environments can change the behavior of reading, so technology scanning can be used to slow us down or move us more efficiently through a text.” In the future, students may read from something like a “tap essay” about history or science, where words, sentences, and images appear. When a reader is ready and taps the screen to move on to the next section of text, or their reading lesson can look like a New York Times digital article, in which text, images, video, and audio clips are laid out and mixed in different ways.
He is busy with computer phonics
Two-thirds of American school children cannot read at grade level. At least partly to blame are the broad reading methods that have dominated classrooms for 40 years but are not based on scientific evidence of how the mind learns to read: “balanced literacy” and its close cousin “whole language,” which emphasize clear instruction. Many children struggle with the basic skills of reading. But over the past several years, a new approach that focuses on these basic skills, often called the “science of reading,” has revolutionized the American education system. Based on decades of scientific evidence, the “Science of Reading” approach is organized into five areas: phonemic awareness (learning all the sounds of the English language), phonics (learning how the sounds relate to letters), vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency.
Read-to-learn apps and digital platforms have the potential to effectively teach some of these basic skills. Especially for phonics and phonics, learning letters and sound combinations through play and practice reinforces the skills. Lexia, arguably the most comprehensive digital platform dedicated to the science of reading, uses responsive technology to teach basic and complex basic reading skills such as letter-sound blending and spelling rules. When learning a specific skill, such as knowing how to read words Food And Sewing With the “ea” vowel combination in the middle, students can’t move on until they know it.
Digital platforms can reinforce specific reading skills, but it is the teacher who continuously monitors the student’s progress and adjusts instruction as needed.
New predictive reading platforms go one step further. Companies like Microsoft and SoapBoxLabs are envisioning a world where students learn to read entirely through computers. The companies claim that using AI speech recognition technology, these digital platforms can closely listen to a student’s reading. Then you can identify the problem areas and provide help.
As digital technology for learning to read spreads to schools—Lexia alone serves more than 3,000 school districts—some reading experts are wary. Research on its effectiveness is limited. While some see technology playing an important role in reading-related tasks such as assessing students and training teachers, many say humans are superior when it comes to teaching.
Digital platforms can strengthen certain reading skills, says Heidi Beverin-Curry, chief academic officer of The Reading League, a teacher training and research organization, but it’s the teacher who constantly monitors student progress and adjusts instruction as needed.
Faith Borkowski, founder of High Five Literacy, a tutoring and consulting service in Plainview, New York, isn’t concerned with reading instructional apps per se. “If there’s a computer program where a few kids can go on and practice a career that fits what we’re doing, that would be me,” she says. But this is not usually the case in the classroom.
In the Long Island schools Borkowski works with, students are more likely to do a lot of reading work on laptops because schools feel pressured to buy and use expensive technology — even though it’s not always the best way to teach reading skills. “I’ve seen it in schools where they have a program, and they say, ‘OK, we bought it—now we have to use it.’ “Once districts buy expensive programs and materials, it’s difficult for them to go back,” she said.
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