I spent most of the holiday with my nieces and nephews, one thing I noticed is their love for all things technology, they spent most of their time downloading and playing new games and they did it quite efficiently. What concerned me was their level of reading, which I found to be a bit poor, and I wondered how these children can be so efficient with technology and yet their reading is not up to par.
As the new year unfolds, we start planning about the new academic year, how we can do better than we did last year, for students in particular how to get better grades or maintain good ones from last year. Wouldn’t it be best to use this technology and these games they love so much to help improve their reading? What are the benefits of using technology to help improve reading skills?
The first and more obvious benefit presented by technology is creating interest and motivation to read. This means building on an already existing interest, in this case technology devices and then using them to improve on reading skills. Instead of devices being used just to play games you can connect the struggling reader to some learning platforms.
These learning platforms can be used for activities such as reading aloud exercises to boost their confidence in word pronunciation and here they can also learn to spell words that they are familiar with in day-to-day use but have not learnt to spell them. The benefit of such platforms is that they can learn at their own pace and unlike the anxiety of having to read aloud in a classroom setting, this is something they can do in their own solace as well. Some of these platforms also help keep track of progress so that one can follow improvements on reading efficiencies.
The digital platforms are quite useful in that a learner has access to the following knowledge; how to pronounce words, how to spell them and more importantly their meaning. They help prepare learners to go from learning to read to reading for learning, where it becomes quite important to understand what they are reading.
An added benefit in using technology for reading is the opportunity to create a network, you can connect the reader to other readers reading a similar book or working on similar assignments and they can share information, notes and have discussions on an online learning community.
In essence what technology provides readers with challenges, alternatives and support. Instead of reading text on a page, one has options of reading text and listening to it, the text being presented in different ways, that is, adjustable fonts and sizes for easy reading. Support is also available as platforms will have instructions suited for individual learning, peers and educators on the platforms to help in knowledge acquisition. All this can be achieved by simply using a technology they are already familiar and comfortable with for learning.