Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

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.”

Think about a book you read last year. How much of it do you remember? Could you list ten things you learned from it? Can you even remember what books you read last year? Back in school, you actually had to remember what you’d read. Tests, term papers, and book reports were all just ways to help you retain that information. So engineer Robert Heaton invented a three-step system for reading a book like a student. (And if you are a student, it might be better than your current habits.)

Today’s students see themselves as digital natives, the first generation to grow up surrounded by technology like smartphones, tablets and e-readers.

Teachers, parents and policymakers certainly acknowledge the growing influence of technology and have responded in kind. We’ve seen more investment in classroom technologies, with students now equipped with school-issued iPads and access to e-textbooks.

Books hold a deep magic, an empowering spell that once cracked open could illuminate the  entire universe of the self. Books are semiotic representations of wisdom, power, authority and intellectual prowess. From the dawn of time till today, ‘people of letters’ or ‘knowledgeable folks’ have always been revered in their societies and when they speak people listen to them. The magic of reading books is eternal and it will always remain so.

There’s plenty of good research on study strategies that promote learning. It’s also well-documented that students don’t always use them. As most of us are well aware, procrastination gets in the way of learning. Cramming ends up being mostly a shoveling exercise—digging up details and dropping them into short term-memory. But there’s also evidence that students don’t know that some strategies do more for learning than others. And guess what? Neither do some faculty.