Comments on: Our Literacy Future

By: Literacy Blog Tour: Mar 8-12

Literacy Blog Tour: Mar 8-12 — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:36:33 +0000

[...] Thoughts on Literacy: Going Where the Children Are Books at Bedtime: Win-Win! Our Literacy Future [...]

By: » Blog Archive » The Tiger’s Bookshelf: Looking at Literacy

» Blog Archive » The Tiger’s Bookshelf: Looking at Literacy — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:24:01 +0000

[...] recent post about evolving definitions of literacy came just after I’d read that in China, writers text [...]

By: Janet

Janet — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 21:54:27 +0000

Blogging is getting a certain amount of flak here because it encourages the idea that writing is an instant process with no need for editing, rewriting, and rewriting again. At least though blogs are written in English and not in that weird shorthand R U (put emoticon here)? I C U.
Now that I plan to live in a country where English-language books are scanty and package delivery can be uncertain, I think about getting a Sony whatever they are called and reading downloaded books, but that feels as though it would be like eating with a mitten on my tongue.

By: Marjorie

Marjorie — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 20:36:56 +0000

Actually, I love listening to audio books. I grew up with audio tapes in the car and now my two listen to them a lot too. And I do think it has given them another perspective on being read to – listening to stories didn’t just come from being read to directly. But reading books off the screen. Hmm. My eyes don’t like it and I get frustrated with not feeling in control of the book – you can’t flick bacwards and forwards very efficiently. But that’s a technological thing. The literacy issues are interesting. Taking it to a further extreme, there has been quite a bit of debate in the UK over the last couple of years about text messaging and what that is doing to traditional perceptions of literacy – here’s a list of links on the National Literacy Trust’s website…

By: Aline

Aline — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:50:21 +0000

Yes, a great photo indeed!… As for the comic book debate, Parents’ Choice has a great article called “Can X-Men Make You Smarter?” which helps “put the skeptics at ease” (here are still so many of them, unfortunately!) Here’s the link to it.

I haven’t been able to get used to e-books myself, but I do think that, for many, it is a great convenience to be able to read a book on a blackberry. I do think we are heading more and more in that direction, and environmental reasons are only part of the reasons why. The portability factor and the choice of downloading anything you want at any time are attractive pros as well. But whenever I try to imagine reading a whole book on screen (whether big or small) I have a hard time. I still struggle with the idea of books on tape!…

By: Janet

Janet — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 18:12:19 +0000

The photo that accompanied the NYT article was quite interesting, wasn’t it? The father with his newspaper, the mother with her book, and the two daughters with their laptops–all reading, all literate. This is reminiscent of the big comic book debate of the fifties–comic books were going to kill the art of reading! Now graphic novels like Maus and Persepolis have expanded the art of reading by using the comic book form to create new literature.

As a bookseller, I’m a purveyor of dead trees. With that in mind, I read the news more and more online and less and less in paper form. It lacks the sensory experience of the pages in my hands, but I feel that’s a luxury that the world can no longer afford. Reading a book on a screen is something I do when editing but it feels “wrong.”

Is that just a feeling that I need to get past? Is the Kindle or books on a laptop the next step? What do other people think?