These days, the role of the reader is much like the role of the learner (in a 21st century digitized context). I see a kind of inherent transformation in both of these roles. Reading used to be a more solitary act, bound to a private and somewhat intimate domain. (Imagine being curled up for some time with a good book…add a fireplace and a big comfy chair). The act of reading in the analog world has always been about reception and private mindscapes. But, today (with the advent of E-Lit), we are presented with a new sense of reading, which necessarily includes a step into an open interactive world, a step marked by vivid agency and choice. In many ways, I see today’s learner positioned like that new kind of reader. Twenty-first century readers and learners must grapple with an open networked world of possibilities, they must exercise their own agency, effectively, in order to determine their own course of meaning.
I think this last part is especially difficult to understand for those who don’t spend a lot of time reading digital and/or online texts. Reading as a social, interactive act, that you have new responsibilities when you read networked texts is a foreign idea for many reading and writing teachers (and others.) Reading is no longer just consumption; it’s participation. We read and click. We read and comment. We read and share. We read and archive. We read and remix. We read and revise. And on…
The obvious complexities of all of that require new literacies that the current Common Core standards don’t address. But more, it requires a shift in mindset, in our stance as we approach the texts we are reading. For most of us who have been using social media to learn over the years, these skills and dispositions evolved out of necessity. I don’t think many of us were “taught” how to interact with connected texts. We have an opportunity now to help our kids understand and develop ways to read deeply and powerfully in digital environments, but only if we can do that for ourselves.