Ashley R. Ott
Assignments & Activities Archive
Activity Description
“Books and screens are now bound up with one another whether we like it or not. Only in patiently working through this entanglement will we be able to understand how new technologies will, or will not, change how we read” (Piper ix).
Digital reading offers new challenges and opportunities for the first-year writer whose “entanglement” in books and screens stifle deep reading praxis. Maryanne Wolf, author of Reader Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World (2018) protests that increased digital reading reshapes the brain’s circuitry to mimic this medium’s characteristics, primarily efficiency and immediacy, which are at odds with habits of sustained attention and critical thought (Wolf 80). Digital reader characteristics include skimming activities like “browsing, scanning, keyword spotting, one-time reading, nonlinear reading, and reading more selectively, while less time is spent on in-depth reading, concentrated reading, and decreasing sustained attention” (Liu 88). If screen-reading minimizes the tactile and spatial orientations of a physical book and thus how readers approach, process, and understand words, how are instructors to harness deep reading’s generative processes for their reading and writing students in an increasingly eBook, Open Educational Resource (OER), and digital textbook learning culture? This deep digital reading activity asks instructors of writing to exploit the collaborative possibilities of migrating course readings into Google Docs, an application originally designed for composing and editing online files with others and in real-time. Yet the Google Docs space works well to support mindful reading of course texts especially because of its collaborative function. Students become readers of shared essays, articles, chapters, and literature, a private environment that encourages a kind of spatial orientation reminiscent of print books and testament to a different kind of learning that can happen through collaborative digital reading. Reading becomes recursive as students and instructors elicit dialogue, react to comments, and leave replies. Please note that to transfer class readings from published books and essays, instructors must comply with U.S. Copyright Office Fair Use (“U.S. Copyright Office Fair Use Index.”). After instructors transfer, compose, or upload course readings as a Google Doc, they may allow anyone with the published link to become an editor of the document. When sharing this link with students, instructors provide guiding questions and instructions on how to read and respond to the text: Should students focus on a particular syntax or rhetorical feature? Should they make note of any repetitions or shifts in person? Students may experiment with both typed responses and embedded audio comments throughout the Google Doc. As students read through the shared text, they make extra-textual connections and gain insight from peer and instructor reactions and responses—an experience that increases empathy and comprehension. Bolstered by peer collaboration, deep digital reading with Google Docs simulates the best practices of close reading alongside newer modes of peer-collaboration, of sharing/exploring together the sense of a sentence.