[Air-l] Re: Literacy Issues

[Wendy Robinson]

But perhaps there is increased visual literacy?  Obviously computer
fluency.  The longtime success of radio to MP3 players and cell phones
suggests that the audio channel remains important.

The pedagogical challenge is to make textual literacy compelling for
audio/visual learners and those who are trained to skim a few lines, get
the gist and move on -- necessary skills in the face of info overload, not
to mention incessant advertising, which requires critical thinking to
filter out?  This is well trodden Postman territory for which the Net is
only the latest pop culture/media/tech culprit.

There have been a slate of recent articles, which I don't believe have
shown up on AoIR, about information deficit and multitasking to the extent
that concentration in general suffers.  Not only is sustained reading
difficult, but any task that requires doing or listening for a prolonged
period of time is tough to sustain.  The media spin on this one is that
we're becoming an ADD society.  We're losing permanence.  Relationships are
suffering, the environment isn't a serious concern, jobs are taken on a
free-agent basis without consideration for long term corporate or customer
outcomes, et al.