Readers Absorb Less on Kindles than on Paper

Research suggests that recall of plot after using an e-reader is poorer than with traditional books ~The Guardian, August 19, 2014

Last week our middle school students participated in the Tech Timeout Academic Challenge, an innovative school program that challenges students to shut down their digital devices for a few days. The purpose of this program is to help students recognize their dependence on technology and to begin to explore how it feels to be temporarily disconnected from their online world.

Six of our students took the challenge and refrained from using their electronic devices for three days, from Wednesday evening at sunset until an hour after sunset  Saturday evening. (Rosh HaShanah concluded Friday evening leading straight into Shabbat.) This opportunity coincided beautifully with the onset of the Jewish High Holy Days, a season when we engage in much reflection and make commitments to improve ourselves in the year to come.  

The Hebrew word Shabbat, means "to cease", "to end", or "to rest." Shabbat,  a day of rest and spiritual enrichment, is the most important ritual observance in Judaism and it is the only ritual observance mentioned in the Ten Commandments. It is even more important than Yom Kippur!   

One of my favorite Shabbat activities is curling up on my couch with a good book. I typically read a whole book Saturday afternoon and I couldn't be happier.  When reading, I am transcended into various historic eras, traveling to far-away places, and engaging in activities and experiences quite different from my weekday life.  Books are magical and the passion evoked from reading a good book, is a true life pleasure. 

Last week six of our students allowed themselves to unplug and use that time instead to read books.  Actual books.  Not an e-reader or Kindle. Real, three dimensional, hold-in-your-hand tomes. When asked what they did during those 72 hours, many said, "I actually enjoyed turning the pages, and reading from each one!"

In today's Parent/Family/Community Education section (below) you will find an article from the August edition of The Guardian that discusses the advantages of reading real books, not electronic versions.  Although you may be skeptical of this premise, you will see the research supports that comprehension skills significantly improve when one reads an actual text.

"When you read on paper you can sense with your fingers a pile of pages on the left growing, and shrinking on the right," said Anne Mangen of Norway's Stavanger University. "You have the tactile sense of progress, in addition to the visual ... [The differences for Kindle readers] might have something to do with the fact that the fixity of a text on paper, and this very gradual unfolding of paper as you progress through a story, is some kind of sensory offload, supporting the visual sense of progress when you're reading. Perhaps this somehow aids the reader, providing more fixity and solidity to the reader's sense of unfolding and progress of the text, and hence the story."

Over the next few weeks of holidays (and no school), unplug, pick up a book, and (re)discover the joys of reading when holding a book in your hands.

Shabbat Shalom/G'mar Tov,

Lisa