Given this, I read the first chapters of Tap, Click, Read with a skeptic’s eye as well as, I hope, a literacy educator’s open mind. The little girls on the cover poring over a screen made me smile…and wince.
It really helped that one author, Michael Levine, has deep roots in Children’s Television Workshop. At 52, I’m from the generation Sesame Street was designed to reach in toddlerhood. I proudly trace my heritage to all the good folks and odd critters of Sesame Street. I was (am?) a groupie (I have an autographed vinyl record album from the early 1970s to prove it!). Ok, then, I thought: If someone from CTW thinks it’s urgent for us to understand more about technology, reading, and early literacy development – if he is taking the lead in doing this – then I’d better get up to speed.
It didn’t take reading too far in to Part I to realize I’d been pegged. Guernsey and Levine cite many studies early on that have to do with the need for better, more creative ways to level the digital divide. Kids from non-elite backgrounds need the same access to, and opportunities to learn to use, high-quality media that privileged kids have. I say I was pegged because my mind sometimes fixes on the idea that kids + technology = kids passively watching screens and not kids actively reading (print). The authors challenge the idea that passive vs. active has to do with the media source rather than the context…and they go on to provide example after example of kids and adults in all sorts of situations who find in their shared activities with technology a multitude of new ways to gain knowledge, express ideas, reinforce connections and build new ones, etc etc.
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I was floored by the early
elementary kids in Virginia who took a critical look at ‘the weather song’ and
ended up producing a multimedia alternative for their school that reflected
their experience and let them learn a lot more about science. Guernsey & Levine offer us a very
different stance than the ‘passive screen v active print’ literacy ideal I’ve
clung to. I’m willing to take it up: Readia:
Media in service of reading and reading
that includes media. Readia,
they say, requires “a new ecosystem of support for children’s learning and
literacy in the Digital Age” (20).
How about you? Where do you fall on the ‘readia’ spectrum, and what roles do you see yourself playing as a co-learner with kids who are grappling with everything their tech-saturated worlds have to offer?
