Under the full title Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading? this week’s New York Times article about adolescent Internet reading has been emailed most by readers. In the second “Most Popular” category “BLOGGED,” the online reading article comes in second to Blogging’s Glass Ceiling. A detail from one of the illustrations to the online reading article is shown above this post; the full illustration, full size is here. The image source is New Literacies Research Lab of the University of Connecticut.
The illustration, and the parts of the New York Times article that discuss online reading, are excellent introductions into the connective powers released by reading within a network. Very much is said and written about the social networking teenagers are doing. This time the focus is on the networking of ideas and knowledge that operate online. There is a rich resonance between the networking of abdominal anatomy in the illustration and the networking of the same ideas in the mind of the learner who views and reads these online materials.
My guess is that the article is “Most Popular” with NY Times readers because it does a very good job of explaining something that I, for one, think is the Internet’s most useful gift to the younger generations: engagement of knowledge in network format that mirrors their mind in content and context. As the kids will tell us, it’s awesome.
