Tip from Jason: Read on Web

My colleague and next-office-door neighbor Jason sent me this tip last week, and I liked it so much I thought I would share it here too.


Here's what Jason had to say:

Read on Web has Great Tools for Literacy

While the browser wars continue to wage, often with tools you never think of using, Read on Web is a small plug-in that could be a big help to learners.


The requirements: Read on Web works on Windows 2000, XP & Vista operating systems. It also works with Internet Explorer 6.0 and above (current version is Internet Explorer 8). What you get is a simple but powerful toolbar in your browser:While saving files, emailing articles to friends, and printing may be old hat, the tool bar has a great filtering feature that locates the main text of a webpage and displays it without all the ads or other distracting text. For example, The Minnesota Literacy Council’s home page displays like this:




But with a simple click of the filter button, you get this:




Not stopping there, the toolbar will also read the article to you. Granted it reads in "Microsoft Sam" which is painful to listen to, but you can easily download Microsoft Mike and Microsoft Mary voices which are a bit better.

The Zoom In and Zoom Out buttons are also cool and very useful, but my favorite feature is the speed reading application that puts the webpage into a new window that bolds text and lets you practice reading. Speed Reading also allows you to set the number of lines, font, and words/characters per minute. Pretty cool for a small free browser add-on.




While Read On Web is not going to change how most people search the web, it may do a good job of changing how it looks for some of us. For more information, check out http://www.readonweb.com/.

Spreading a little literacy love…

Jason

Reading Rockets Videos from PBS

"Reading Rockets" is a series from PBS that focuses on issues of children's literacy, including brain research into reading difficulties, teaching strategies that work, and ways to empower parents.

Although the series does not deal directly with adult literacy issues, much of the information is valuable to the adult literacy community. Adults who struggle to read were once children who struggled to read. As adult educators, we can learn from our peers who work with children.

Of particular interest to adult educators might be the episodes on Reading Comprehension and Becoming Bilingual. Many of the ideas that these successful teachers are using with children and parents could be adapted to work for adult learners.

Take a look!

Is reading on the .net "real reading"?

My colleague Emily sent me a message on Twitter yesterday, asking for my opinion on an article in the New York Times titled "Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?" It's a big, deep, and broad question with many more aspects than I'll be able to discuss here, but I'll give it my best shot, Emily!

In the concluding chapter of a book I read recently* (and yes, despite the fact that I am a netaholilc, I also read books), the author discussed this very issue. One of her conclusions is that the Internet age is bringing us into a "Secondary Orality", which is to say that communication and interaction with 'text' on the Internet is bringing us back to aspects of the oral culture which preceded our current literate culture. As one of the people interviewed in the Times article said, the 'net is more about conversation than it is about reading. It's just that, in many cases, the conversation takes place in print.

Reading on the 'net is sometimes real reading (I sat down and read a 4 page article from the Times on the 'net, didn't I?) but in many cases it's really more of a discussion. In a discussion, ideas flow quickly in a stream. We don't rest our mind on any of them for long, but rather we allow ourselves to be swept along in the give and take, point and counter-point, tangent and return, fluid experience of words and ideas.

This is both a good thing and a bad thing. Discussions are wonderful! I thrive on them--both the online and the face-to-face kind--and love the opportunity to engage in meaningful conversation with people from many places and perspectives. But it's a bad thing if it completely replaces the quiet, reflective, self-to-text introspection that can only come when one individual sits down to read. As Maryanne Wolf explains in her excellent book, the most important thing that literacy gave us is time to think. Reading is thinking. Discussion is also thinking, but it's not the same kind of thinking. Discussion, in my experience, is usually thinking broadly (many ideas touched on lightly) while reading is thinking deeply (one idea explored thoroughly).

Ultimately, I believe that we need to be able to do both things well to succeed in the modern world. Reading on the 'net is not a substitute for reading books, but it is an important complement to it. I wouldn't give up either for a fist full of greenbacks.

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*The book in question is: Proust and the Squid: the Story and Science of the Reading Brain, by Maryanne Wolf, Harper: 2007. Learn more about this book on LibraryThing!