How Does Technology Affect The Way We Read?

As everyone has heard many times before, the Internet has greatly changed how we view our world. In particular, it has changed how we receive our information. In the past, it has always been through reading, but with technology, that isn’t always true anymore. Reading just isn’t the best way to learn for everyone. I’ve always loved reading since I learned how. I would read every sign, every warning label, every address I could. I read books constantly. I’d block out every conversation, absorbed into the story in front of me. And I was praised for it. This was the image of someone who was “smart”: quiet and endlessly reading. In some ways, this was true, I could read quickly, and I could read well. On the other hand, let me tell you about my brother, Stephen. Stephen is an incredibly smart kid. He gets high grades in any math class he takes and wants to be a nuclear engineer. He can do it, too. He and I are very similar in many ways, but one of the major differences between us is reading. Whereas I’ve mostly used books to get my information, he would watch videos. Every night, he’d fall asleep watching a Netflix documentary. He didn’t hate books or think they were useless. They just didn’t interest him as much. He used the resources he had to learn. Was I smarter than

There are more ways to obtain knowledge. Educational videos can demonstrate a concept as well as describe it. Visualizations are a key to learning. Many textbooks just contain block of text, and it puts readers to sleep. It doesn’t grab the student’s interest. Some online textbooks include videos, but they are often a very small part and fail to be even remotely interesting. Why don’t we accept that resources can be more interesting than a drab wall of text? We have videos and learning programs. We should use them. Just because something is interesting doesn’t mean it isn’t worthy to be