Paper vs. Digital Reading

Due to the changes caused by the corona virus, there have been alterations in my course. The class discussions will all be on Google Classroom, so my blog will be a little different from here on out.

Now let's dive in and catch up! The week before chaos broke out, I was supposed to lead a rotating chair about Paper vs. Digital Texts. I was super excited because I have my own preferences, and thoughts about how people learn from different style texts.

The online conversation that started about my questions I wrote for the class was full of comments similar to my own responses. When it came to personal preference, my classmates and I all felt the same. Paper for us was preferred, especially for longer texts. Since we all like taking notes and highlighting right on the text, paper is much easier for us. Plus we all like the physicality of being able to hold what we are reading. We also all felt that it was easier to retain information and navigate the text better when reading from paper. For shorter texts though, many of us preferred reading it on a device. Since we find these short articles when we are on our phones or our laptops, it's easier to just read them right there on the spot.

But what we all had to consider was the preference of the younger generation. Running a classroom based on the teacher's preference (especially when a generation like the upcoming one is so different from mine) is not going to work. Students are growing up learning primarily on tablets, touchscreens, computers. By the time they have reached high school, they will have formed a preference, and have figured out which way of reading is best for them. As teachers, we should learn from their preference, respect it, and give them options when it comes to completing reading tasks.

Not including technology in our classrooms is not going to work, and learning from only technology is not enough, according to research. We need to create an appropriate proportion of technology to paper in the classroom, and be able to recognize when something should be read from print and when it's ok for students to read off a screen.