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The Future of Reading Home Learn More Standards Inspiration About the Author |
Design Process
The phases of the design process have certainly clarified the vision of my end product. It’s taken a shape in my head, with room for improvement and the door still wide open for creativity and inspiration. One question still lurks in the back of my mind and I pondered it this week as I mapped my project. Is my project innovative? Does it have the hallmarks of what students will need to meet the demands that the nefariously unpredictable future will make upon them? Am I simply holding onto old pedagogies and perceiving a need that is no longer relevant and dressing it up with fancy tech tools? Will reading ever be obsolete? Is it still necessary for people to be literate with words?
In his introduction to the TPACK model Punya Mishra makes a provocative statement. He says that technology has not only changed how we teach (pedagogy), but also what we teach (content). He points out that information no longer comes in a drip, it comes in a deluge. We don’t teach knowledge, per se, of a content area anymore, we teach how to access and filter information. I would add that information and knowledge are not synonymous. Knowledge is constructed and becomes part of a person’s mind. It is usable. It is information put to action by a whole host of other skills, character qualities, and choices. So I asked myself this about reading - is it information? Is reading in danger of becoming obsolete through that lens? No, it certainly provides information. It is the skill and process by which we access information. Certainly reading will change with the times. Already the physically bound book is making its way into the annals of the past. Reading, writing, publishing, storing information - all of it will be digital. Those of us who love the smell and heft of a book will need to visit a museum or make our bookshelves our own museums. Probably reading will become more reliant on what we used to call textual clues - pictures, charts, photos. Now infographics and videos will BE text. It’s a matter of semantics. But I’ll maintain that reading itself will not disappear. I’ll use two of the standards for 21st century learning as a couple reasons why. 
Reading is intrinsically tied to two of the 21st learning skills - critical thinking and communication. Reading well - fluent enough that you can think about the ideas you read and analyze them, is also part of the filtering of the deluge of information. Reading fluently and with automaticity, a necessity for deep critical thinking, comes partly through reading much and many and with absorption. One of the most painless ways to achieve this fluency is by enjoying reading enough that you choose to do it much and many. A bit of a catch 22. Regardless, reading provides fodder, both process and content, for critical thinking skills. Another 21st century learning skill reliant on reading, in partnership with writing, is communication. Communication, especially if it will be global, crossing time zones and long distance, will need to have a written manifestation. Writing, and therefore reading, is not likely to become obsolete as long as humans strive to communicate.
So now I’ve answered satisfactorily for the purpose of this project that reading itself won’t become obsolete. (Whew!) What about the innovative aspect. I got to thinking I should analyze my prototype through both the 4 C’s of 21st century skills, but also through the lens of the ISTE standards for students. In my mindmap, I labelled in purple some of the places I saw traits that demonstrate these standards: empowered learner, creative, communicator, constructing knowledge.
And finally, I thought about something George Couros said in his book The Innovator’s Mindset. Couros begins his whole book by defining what innovation is and is not. Innovation is not just something new. It must be something done in a new and better way. Further, he proposes that in the context of education, innovation must also be student centered. That is to say that the needs of the student are considered. He treats the quality of empathy as crucial. Empathy is more than just seeing someone’s need. At its fullest, it is being able to feel almost the same thing as another human because your experiences are so similar. At second best, it is using imagination, sensitivity, and intelligence to try to feel what another experiences. For me, teaching a student to love to read is an empathetic outreach. I’ve spent enough years working with students of all ages to have observed the pain a kid feels when he or she doesn’t enjoy reading. I’ve heard enough people, adults and kids alike, say “I wish I liked to read” to know that the endeavor is worthwhile, perhaps even crucial for the sake of our kids heading into the next century.
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Research
Support and Next Steps
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So back to that Catch 22. How DO you get a kid to enjoy reading so that he will choose to keep doing it, much and many, for the rest of his life? If a student gets to 6th grade and doesn’t like to read, is there a “do over” for her? We can’t erase a child’s negative experiences with reading. We can’t turn the ship overnight. But we can turn it! I can say from experience that I’ve seen reluctant readers go from dreading reading to having their noses buried in books. My prototype will attempt to create one humble model to follow.
Logo Design Process
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First Drawings
I knew I wanted symbols on my logo that would represent the different senses and/or learning modalities. I chose the eye, ear, mouth, hand, and a screen for the multi-media aspect of transliteracy. I need to convey both that transliteracy is often digital but also that it most definitely involves more than one form of input for reading and more than one form of output for writing. I also wanted a traditional form of a book represented. |
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First digital draft: Logojoy
I chose Logojoy because it looked like it created much of the logo for you and I had very little graphic design experience. I did find it limiting, though. I couldn’t get more than one graphic at a time. I couldn’t have both a book and the digital representation. I ultimately had to chose between the two, so I chose the multi-media aspect over the paper book image. I chose the color blue because it is the color (in marketing studies) that represents stability, dependability, trustworthiness. I felt that “getting rid of books” was already a fear-inducing idea to many folks, so I purposely did not go with purple, the color for creativity and innovation and “thinking outside the box”.
I chose Logojoy because it looked like it created much of the logo for you and I had very little graphic design experience. I did find it limiting, though. I couldn’t get more than one graphic at a time. I couldn’t have both a book and the digital representation. I ultimately had to chose between the two, so I chose the multi-media aspect over the paper book image. I chose the color blue because it is the color (in marketing studies) that represents stability, dependability, trustworthiness. I felt that “getting rid of books” was already a fear-inducing idea to many folks, so I purposely did not go with purple, the color for creativity and innovation and “thinking outside the box”.
Second digital draft:
The only thing I changed in my next draft was the tag line. I changed it from “Reading for All” because I realized that although transliteracy is extremely helpful to students who are at-risk or special needs, this wasn’t the heart of my message. “Reading All Ways” means that the medium is not the most crucial aspect of reading, it is that reading is done at all. Just read! Also, I like how it is a play on words… reading all ways, and reading always. I also adjusted the blue color to “pop” a bit more on a digital platform.
The only thing I changed in my next draft was the tag line. I changed it from “Reading for All” because I realized that although transliteracy is extremely helpful to students who are at-risk or special needs, this wasn’t the heart of my message. “Reading All Ways” means that the medium is not the most crucial aspect of reading, it is that reading is done at all. Just read! Also, I like how it is a play on words… reading all ways, and reading always. I also adjusted the blue color to “pop” a bit more on a digital platform.