Skim, Dive, Surface: Teaching Digital Reading
Acknowledging that this is my book, Skim, Dive, Surface offers a (pun fully intended) deep dive into mapping out where, how, and why attitudes about reading across different media have emerged, bridging that historical conversation into pragmatic tips. The longest middle portion of the book includes several example classroom exercises based on a digital reading framework. The digital reading framework is intended to help instructors identify practices that digital reading is particularly well-suited for supporting, all while recognizing that these classroom activities could be applicable for print reading experiences too. Bear in mind that this book was written pre-AI so may merit some AI-era updates! But I stand by the principles described in this book (even in the AI era) since these classroom activities still encourage students to engage deeply, critically, and intentionally with their reading.
Students learn and remember content in a variety of ways and, as instructors, it is not up to us to dictate the terms for how students retain and transfer understandings that they glean from particular reading assignments. What we can make space for, however, are a variety of avenues through which students can work to apply, reflect upon, and remember what they learn from their readings. By opening up options for reading, storing, and archiving ideas in digital spaces, we move students closer to participating in Universal Design for Learning (UDL) pedagogy, a framework that invites flexible learning environments for our neurodiverse students. It is simply not possible for every pedagogical strategy we take to reach every single learner, but the more options that we can reasonably provide to our students, the more equitable we make our educational practices and the more students we can reach. Helping students understand how they can archive their work is but one way to reach more of them where we are. As we continue to think more about the possibilities of reading in digital spaces, we get even closer to finding more ways that students can become engaged in reading.