Out of the 600 000 students assessed in PISA 2018, representing 79 countries, "one in four students had difficulty with basic aspects of reading, such as identifying the main idea in a text of moderate length or connecting pieces of information provided by different sources" (PISA, 2018).
There are also 745 million illiterate youth and adults and most live in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia. These two regions are home to more than 90 percent of illiterate young people in the world (UNESCO, 2017). The informed use of personalized reading technology could not only help individual students who are struggling with reading but also improve literacy rates in those areas of the world where access to primary education is a challenge.
There are also 745 million illiterate youth and adults and most live in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia. These two regions are home to more than 90 percent of illiterate young people in the world (UNESCO, 2017). The informed use of personalized reading technology could not only help individual students who are struggling with reading but also improve literacy rates in those areas of the world where access to primary education is a challenge.
When it comes to individual students, the reasons they struggle with reading are as varied as the students themselves. Multiple strategies are needed to support beginner and struggling readers. Adaptive and online technologies can help individualize instruction as long as evidence based instructional strategies are applied.
Therefore, any reading technology aiming at teaching or improving reading skills should be evaluated through the lens of the five dimensions of reading. Is the technology targeting one or several of the five dimensions? Are the dimensions combined simultaneously for more efficiency?
Therefore, any reading technology aiming at teaching or improving reading skills should be evaluated through the lens of the five dimensions of reading. Is the technology targeting one or several of the five dimensions? Are the dimensions combined simultaneously for more efficiency?
Activity
Please note that this activity is no longer being monitored. We've left the survey available to allow you to explore your own ideas regarding personalized reading technologies. Please see below for a summary of results from when our ETEC 522 classmates took the survey. A big thanks to these classmates for their contributions.
Survey Results:
While most respondents to the survey had experience using reading technology and see it as an asset, they also had mixed feelings as to how user friendly the interface turned out to be. 11 out of 18 respondents answered that when choosing a learning technology, as educators, they do assess the research behind it. However, many acknowledged that, as individual consumers, their final decision is mostly motivated by their personal experience with the technology. Respondents were equally divided between those who believe a student could learn to read using only technology and those who believe that the intervention of a teacher is necessary. One respondent mentioned an experiment by Sugata Mitra in India. He set up a housed desktop computer on the streets in front of his office. Many of the poor children in the area found this box and began using the computer but were unaware of how it functioned because all of the text was in English. While these children had no working understanding of the English language, Mitra found that due to their intellectual curiosity, they taught themselves how to read, write, and speak English |