Computer Technology and Reading Instruction
In Chapter 6 of the NRP report, the panel concludes that due to the limited number of experimental studies available, the instructional recommendations for reading and computers are unclear. The panel asserts that computer technology can be used for reading instruction, however, the authors state there is a "great deal of additional exploration" to be done in order to understand how computer use should be operationalized in the reading classroom.
In particular, the panel calls attention to the paucity of research on the use of the Internet for reading instruction. One potential explanation for this void is the concern that at this time, teachers are not well-prepared to teach with the Internet and therefore its use is limited in terms of the breadth and depth with which it is used for instructional purposes (Wallace, 2004). According to Wallace (2004), the use of the Internet presents challenges due to the unbounded space, extreme fluidity and unpredictable nature of the Internet. Additionally, the Internet disrupts the pattern of textbook authority, presents teachers with difficulty in monitoring students' learning pathways and lacks the sequence in content acquisition that is afforded by more traditional curricula.
Read more about this topic: National Reading Panel
Famous quotes containing the words computer, technology, reading and/or instruction:
“The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower.”
—Robert M. Pirsig (b. 1928)
“Technology is not an image of the world but a way of operating on reality. The nihilism of technology lies not only in the fact that it is the most perfect expression of the will to power ... but also in the fact that it lacks meaning.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“Chaucer sawed life in half and out tumbled hundreds of unpremeditated lives, because he didn’t have the cast-iron grid of a priori coherence that makes reading Goethe, Shakespeare, or Dante an exercise in searching for signs of life among the conventions, compulsions, self-justifications, proofs, wise saws, simple but powerful messages, and poetry.”
—Marvin Mudrick (1921–1986)
“Everything from airplanes to kitchen blenders—and even chopsticks—comes with an instruction manual. Children, despite all their complexity, do not.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)