Digital Literature – my experiences

Digital literature is an interesting thing for me on a personal level. I dislike reading for pleasure on a Kindle/e-book but I quite like digital resources for work and study. I prefer using pen/paper when writing notes and hand correcting drafts rather than typing. I love the smell of a bookstore and that ‘new book’ smell. I don’t really like buying books online but I generally do because they’re cheaper than the bookstores (www.bookdepository.com is brilliant for cheap books. Plus, free shipping to Australia! Win!). However, while this may be beneficial and how I personally prefer my relationship with digital literature to be; not everyone has the same relationship that I do. Not everyone wants to have the same relationship that I do with digital literature.

My primary and secondary schooling had very little emphasis on increasing digital literature – most of our work was done in workbooks and only research done digitally (even then it was “you’re on your own”) and we never had the option of digital versions of texts. The school library had a small group of computers that were only just large enough for a class and e-books/audiobooks were non-existent. The physical text collection left something to be desired; in both fiction and non-fiction. In my time there (Kindergarten to Stage 2 [South Australian equivalent to Year 12]) there was very little done in terms of keeping any of the resources up to date.

Within my workplaces, it varies quite a bit. The Out of School Hours Care I work out, places great value on play and ‘doing’. There is very little in the way of digital literature. We, as staff members, on occasion get articles that relate to the pedagogy and our practice; however, they tend to be printed out for us rather than an email link to it.  At my retail position, there is a lot of training that occurs and much of it is now through an online portal that we can access at any time. This makes it very easy for us to do what we need to at a time that is convenient to us and our schedule.

As a whole, we tend to get caught up in the excitement of technology and the impact that it has that we forget about the disadvantages. While, yes, accessibility and teacher ability to successfully integrate digital literature can be an issue, it is a fairly common problem and covered extensively elsewhere. One less covered disadvantage can be how much the students are taking in and whether they are actually advancing their reading skills (Cull, 2011, para 33). With students being more likely to browse, scan and key word search, the skill of in-depth reading is quite possibly on the decline. This is one thing that we, as Teacher-Librarians, can assist our students in is developing the skills that they may not otherwise naturally gain.
​
I hope this shows an insight to my background with digital literature and one disadvantage to the increase of digital literature in our schools.


References
Cull, B. W. (2011). Reading revolutions: online digital text and implications for reading in academe. First Monday, 16(6). Retrieved from https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3340/2985