So many of our students are fully immersed in the use of technology as part of their education. As a matter of fact, schools seem to be competing over who can provide the most up-to-date devices and apps to enhance the curriculum: voice-to text for writing, note-taking apps, e-books, audiobooks, spell checks, grammar checks, not to mention online research sources. Do they help or hinder the processes of reading and writing? As we did during the last technology blog, let’s look at what some of the experts have to say.
The cognitive neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf, director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University, has discovered that there are aspects of the reading brain circuit that are changing coinciding with the amount of time we spend on the internet and digital reading. Specifically, we are losing our ability to slow-read. She stated, “I worry we will not use our most preciously acquired deep-reading processes because we’re just given too much stimulation.”
Anne Mangen of Norway’s University of Stavanger looked at comprehension skills of reading on-screen versus on paper. Device readers performed significantly worse when asked to place fourteen events that happened in the story in correct order. Interestingly, the majority of the test subjects showed an “overwhelming preference for print.”
But let’s get back to the basics of reading. A child may learn to decode words, but she cannot comprehend the word if it is unfamiliar. Children get meaning from text through background knowledge and a rich language base. Language learning is rooted in early social interactions with adults. In a study by Anna Sosa of Northern Arizona University, parents said fewer words and responded to their child less when using e-toys versus traditional toys like a wooden animal puzzle. In another study, parental language was more restricted when sharing an e-book with their child versus sharing a paper book.
On the other hand, we are often asked if it’s okay to listen to audiobooks. Daniel Willingham, the author behind the popular Science and Education Blog, states that “Listening to an audio book might be considered cheating if the act of decoding were the point. But if appreciating the language and the story is the point, it’ not (cheating).” This is a very important point to consider when making the decision to allow your child to listen to an audio version of a book.
But what about writing? Research shows that laptops and tablets tend to be distracting. It’s so easy to switch over to something more interesting in a boring lecture. Moreover, in a 2014 Scientific American article, it was reported that “students who used longhand remembered more and had a deeper understanding of the material." The investigators proposed that students who write by hand “listen, digest, and summarize so that they can succinctly capture the essence of the information.” Because keyboarding is a faster process, students who type tend to capture the whole lecture without processing its meaning.
Speech-to-text apps and programs allow a student to verbalize their essays and responses versus keyboarding. This has obvious advantages to persons with physical disabilities or dysgraphia. However, research on the effectiveness of its use with students who have learning disabilities is very limited. Common sense would indicate that it might be useful for brainstorming and for creating more complex sentence structures; however, it may be a hindrance when working on organization of ideas and essays (unless the student is able to revise and edit independently.)
Technology provides incredible access to information, but too much use for educational purposes may not necessarily be a good thing. As we will discuss in next week’s blog, we have to learn how and when to use technology to our advantage, and not let technology control us in negative ways.
-LeeAnne Fura, MS, CCC/SLP