All this discussion about a post-literate society has gotten me thinking.
A few months ago, I went to the UK to visit some friends.
My friends twin boys, who are 12 and at the end of their first year of high school, are not big readers.
One of the boys has dyslexia and struggles to make text work for him. What amazed me though was how many books and the level of the material that these two boys were getting through.
Both boys have their own mp3 players and smartphones. When at home and not doing their homework, both boys can frequently be seen wandering around with headphones plugged in, pottering around or snuggled up in a comfortable chair. Both boys are avid audio-book "readers" or, I guess more accurately, "listeners." At the moment Ben is making his way through Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy while Alex is almost finished JRR Tolkein's The Hobbit.
What astounded me most was the amount of content that they were actually taking in and could quite happily discuss major and minor plot points with you in a very animated discussion.
They have access to a number of speech to text programs both at school and at home, but as yet there are few text to speech options when it comes to their school material.
If only they had access to their school textbooks in audio format. It might make it easier for them to negotiate the next few years of their academic lives.
Since my return from this trip, I decided to give audio books a try for myself. In the past week I have finally finished the seventh Harry Potter book in audio format. I enjoyed the whole experience immensely but have come to the conclusion that I would only use audio books for books that I am already familiar with as I miss too much content when my brain wanders. My auditory processing is obviously not quite as advanced as these boys.
I think the important thing to consider in all of this is the fact that everyone has a different learning style. I know that I am a visual learner and struggle to remember things I hear. These boys are obviously more aural (or linguistic-verbal) learners. I think the dominance of certain learning styles are starting to shift in this digital post-literate society.
For a while now, I have been curious about how the digital reading revolution is going to impact the primary school library.
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I can see how secondary school libraries are likely to move across to digital text books and see a diminishing number of print resources available on the shelves. It is much easier to visualise students in high schools and college (year 11 and 12 in the ACT) as students are more responsible and can be trusted to look after their own laptops or tablets (and by tablets I include everything from iPads to e-book readers).
What I cannot see is how pre-school and early primary school students can be expected to care for and safely manage a laptop or tablet when they struggle to look after a single book at the moment.
Digital collections are likely to filter through to the primary school environment in one capacity or another, but I think we are a long way of all print resources vanishing from the primary school library altogether.
As for those who are questioning whether or not school libraries are still needed have obviously not witnessed the joy of preschool and early primary school students when they share a book with an adult and have the freedom to choose their own book to take home for the week. Children just learning to read are often ravenous for stories, eager to find one that they particularly enjoy and start to develop their own personal tastes.
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After my ranting though, I did just come across this video by Library Ireland. It's a book domino video titled "Smart people use smart libraries." Enjoy.
