A Computerworld article claims that cell phones (well, participatory media) could be a savior for books, claiming that kids don’t like mass media because they are alienated from it’s production. Well, that might be the case, but I don’t think it has anything to do with a disconnect with production or valuing the work of peers over that of unknown experts. I think it has more to do with the age of the content and the portability of the content as to why “books” are dying.
If you think about why books may be dying, you only have to look at how children are socialized into reading. Book friendly families will raise readers. Book neutral families are going to rely on schools. Schools are increasingly without libraries and with old textbooks. So if the modeling surrounding books tells them that books are old and beaten up and contain only old information for school, what do you think kids are going to think about books in the library or in Chapters? If they compare this reading to the massive amount of text that they are reading online or in some other media you can see that reading isn’t suffering, and it’s not about who is writing (as in the article), it is more about how current the material is. If you are using textbooks that are 20 years old, certainly the basics should be ok, but the examples? If you are doing a novel study and the book looks more like something that is more at home underwater or in a mushroom farm, what do you think kids are going to think… what are you going to think?
So the post yesterday about shine and novelty connects in a way here. The novelty of what is happening right here and now is what people are going to care about and feel as being relevant. Unless we change the majority of k-9 education to basic skills and history, many of the text resources that are out there are certainly not doing kids any favors, but the phones and other connected devices that are able to provide the “news now” certainly might be able to.
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