Reading

One of the profs at Pepperdine and I were talking today, and he said to me that he felt like reading was really necessary in today's society. He was talking about how he believes in visual learning and so much can be told by pictures and I started thinking about what he was saying. Does it make me really traditional to say that I think that's nuts? I do understand that some elements of reading can be taken over by other technologies, but I still believe that reading has so much to offer in terms of storytelling, world building, knowledge building. I don't know how it can be replaced with other tools. And if that's what happens, I believe that will shortchange students. I'm open to displaying knowledge in other ways. I don't believe watching a movie, listening to a recording, even an interactive multi-media project has the same impact as reading a book. Perhaps I'm beating a dead horse, but I need to find a way to make this point to my students, the people who really matter. Perhaps, this year, I will have my students prove the point with a project where they get to figure out a way to use other media to tell the story, providing all of the essential learning. Hmm, an interesting idea coming on...