New Age Reading

“Today, the vast majority of the new “book-like” digital genres are targeted for general purpose, network-connected computer workstations that have Web browsers and sometimes an array of other software that extend the browser’s capabilities (such as movie viewers, or QuickTime VR).”

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Up until my pursuit in education, I had not heard of most of the assistive technologies that can help a student progress in reading. Becoming better acquainted with the digital story held a lot of promise for me as a special education educator in urban schools. As expected, it did bring about lots of benefits and opportunities for students success. Students have the ability to use features such as text-to-read, enlarging font, read along and much more on the PC, Notebooks, and even newer technologies such as iPad and similar products by Amazon. One thing that Lynch mentions is that the new digital book era is targeted toward commercial use and major companies when we have a large percent of the nation’s urban population reading below grade level and failing out of school. Who are these digital book companies really working for and how is there obvious and unavoidable pursuit to market and sell products helping our future? While I am a advocate for digital text, things need to become more student-teacher friendly and less geared toward the progress of making people in general lazy readers.