Digital Literacy - Young Children Growing Up Digitally Competent

For my first E-Ink blog post on the digital presentation of the written word I am going to discuss the concepts revolving around digital education of the next generation of students.

It is pretty clear that American culture is progressing towards a new, modern epoc of screen culture. This era will reflect a time period in which a basic level of digital competence will be necessary in order to properly obtain information and remain competitive in job markets and the like.
I read the following article from the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/16/books/16libr.html?scp=2&sq=librarians&st=cse) last week entitled "In Web Age, Library Job Gets Update" and found it to be very interesting, mainly because it seems to support the notions that a digital culture which includes digital literacy does diminish our general attention spans and capability to remain engaged in reading, yet encourage reading at the same time

However, the main focus of the article is a librarian’s efforts to get a younger generation to read through methods of digital education. These methods include internet research education and lessons on PowerPoint and media creation. The article frequently gave the impression that children, who often resist the efforts of their teachers to get them to read, are more likely to become engaged in reading if it takes some digital form like interactive online encyclopedias. This is quite possible due to this younger generation’s early exposure to digital media that previous generations had not.

It is interesting to see that this how the role of the librarian has begun to evolve into the role of “information literacy teacher”, as described by the article. This role of information literacy teacher prepares students to properly utilize the internet and its vast, complex array of digital multimedia that comes with it

In the end, this article shows us that digital literacy may be the only way to keep students engaged in reading. While this may not be as great as reading actual physical books and magazines, it is still the fact that young students are reading which is most important.

However, will this preference of digital literature in young students cause an endless cycle of attention deprivation? Or will the interactive nature of digital literature increase readership in our youth? Only the future will tell.