Robin Talkowski’s Blog: Reading & Technology

Don Leu and his research team at the University of Connecticut identified key skills needed for reading on the internet.  These skills are termed the New Literacies.  I thought I would look at each of these skills and compare and contrast them to traditional reading instruction.  The first skill identified is: Identify Important Issues or Problems.  This skill appears to be the equivalent of Setting a Purpose before reading.  Students need to know what they are reading to discover.  When conducting research on the internet, it is even more important to know what the purpose of the research is.  A click here and there on links may yield some interesting information or fun sites, but does it relate to the issue or problem being researched?  This different context makes clarity of purpose even more important.