A New Generation of Readers in the Digital age: Attentive or Distracted?

Abstract

Within a progressively high knowledge-based society, globally-oriented world, and diverse society, making sure that our students are well equipped with the necessary tools and competences to live in this digital age is, in fact, one of the prevalent challenges facing today’s education. Indeed, the novel nature of reading and readers has enormously changed as digital texts and technologies become more prevalent. Thus, teachers are under the pressure to shape their teaching visions to more mobile-based reading ways that will cope with learners’ new requirements to exist, struggle, and cooperate in a newly global scenario. Thus, the present paper attempts at reflecting upon the challenging task of teachers, from developing world, to incorporate new educational technologies into their typical classrooms in general and reading practice in particular for a better teaching/learning experience. Nonetheless, one should be cognizant of the fact that despite the growing importance of ICTs in education, there is no “magic bullet” that will answer all existing challenges (Schramm, 1977), still there is a lack of a structured approach based on collaboration, innovation, development and implementation of educational technologies. Hence, incorporating technology within the reading process may create a challenging problem at this level; do our learners, in such a technological scenario, read as attentively and thoroughly as required? How do their brains respond to onscreen text than to words on paper? Should teachers be worried about dividing learners’ attention between pixels and ink? This paper will answer these questions and many other concerns.