David Warlick comments on an article quoting from an National Endowment for the Arts study finding that Americans are reading less and reading less well.
While I’m concerned with Americans’ decreased ability to read well, to say that Americans are reading books less often should be of no shock to anyone given the addition of numerous other media in our lives. When will we start looking at the value of the new media and harnessing its power in education instead of sitting around woe-is-me-ing about kids reading books less?
I recommend Steven Johnson’s Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter
Our arts prototype teacher just presented our staff with a training that included the “cone of learning.” According to the cone, things that we read are retained at low levels compared to watching a movie and much less than participating in something such as drama. I know I have seen this with my students who make excellent connections to the Disney movies they have seen in the theater. They have also made vocabulary connections to words they hear characters in their video games say.