The Fall, and Rise, of Reading | Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path | Scoop.it

David Jolliffe has seen how much trouble students have had in recent years doing their reading.

He has given them a full article or book and watched them struggle to read anything beyond an excerpt. He has handed them a nonfiction book and heard them call it a novel. He has asked them to tell him the main idea of a text and watched their eyes search the page for answers. 

“The main idea in a text is not on the page,” Jolliffe, who retired last year from the University of Arkansas as a professor of English and of curriculum and instruction, tells them. It’s “something in your head that you need to construct.”