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Comprehension results in screen versus print reading: how the internet is making it harder to read books

2/5/2014

Spritz is a new app that encourages extreme scanning.

This is a snippet from a very fascinating article from an Australian newspaper last month. The whole article is well worth a read for 21st Century educators.

A 2012 Israeli study of engineering students – who grew up in the world of screens – looked at their comprehension while reading the same text on screen and in print when under time pressure to complete the task.

The students believed they did better on screen. They were wrong. Their comprehension and learning was better on paper.

Researchers say that the differences between text and screen reading should be studied more thoroughly and that the differences should be dealt with in education, particularly with school-aged children. There are advantages to both ways of reading. There is potential for a bi-literate brain.

"We can't turn back," Wolf said. "We should be simultaneously reading to children from books, giving them print, helping them learn this slower mode, and at the same time steadily increasing their immersion into the technological, digital age. It's both. We have to ask the question: What do we want to preserve?"

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