What is Digital Literacy today and how are children’s skills of deep reading developing in a fragmented, hurried world? Maggie Jackson, author of Distracted, joins the Children and Media course taught by Mary Rothschild of http://www.healthymediachoices.org to speak about the fractured experience of digital reading, the multitasking environment in which we read and the impact of such fragmentation on children’s ability to read deeply. Hyper-fractured pages with less-relevant links – a staple of kids’ e-books and web sites – lower comprehension and recall, even sowing confusion among young readers, just as cluttered physical classrooms have been shown to do. A key overlooked question, as well, is how our rose-colored views of technology are impacting the teaching and attainment of literacy. Parents who are wow’ed by bells and whistles influence children’s choices.

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