ExchangeEveryDay Past Issues

Wow. I am definitely guilty of that behavior! I have always loved reading and thinking and discussing things that I have read. Lately, I have been wondering about my lack of attention and ability to focus on more than a few paragraphs. It's good to know that I'm not alone and it makes me wonder what I need to do to refocus on in-depth information instead of searching for sound bytes.

As a child, an avid reader from age 6 years, I couldn't wait to go see my aunt and uncle at their home. One reason was that they had a complete set of leather bound encyclopedias. That was something we never had when I was growing up! At approximately 11 and 12 years of age, my sister and I felt fortunate to get the (smaller-sized) Funk & Wagnalls that mom got as a grocery store chain promotion, collecting one volume a week! It was not as comprehensive and surely not as nice as my aunt's and uncle's set of encylopedias, but still, it was a way to learn about so many things! It was a way to escape to foreign countries or know how farmers grow crops. It was clearly the best tool for learning. I must have read each volume cover-to-cover, even though there were no glossy pages, no smell of leather and no brightly colored photographs, such as filled the leather-bound encylopedias.

Today, and for the past 14 years or so that I've had a personal computer, the internet options for learning have become my encyclopedia. . . my tool for learning. I have printed out many articles, used information in classes I teach, and pride myself on finding sites that offer valid and credible, research-based information.

The author of your latest article highlights 'skimmers' who quickly scan articles or information in other formats, frequently moving on to another site without having fully attained the information from the previous source.

I think that the solution is simple in that we need to be mindful of HOW we puruse the internet sites that are available to readers. There needs to be more attention and focus given to the information that is 'googled', as I hear it so often referenced.

At this point in my life, I am a grandmother of 4 and have an active life teaching both children and adult learners. Alot of ongoing education is gleaned from the ability to access the internet and to engage in those wonderful 'google searches' to learn as much as possible about a plethora of topics! My goal is to help my grandchildren find the good things on the internet, and 'googling' will be a large part of their education and learning of personal computers. I will make certain of that as a hands-on grammy and also someone who continues to love to learn!

I think the author of this article doesn't really understand what research is all about. What the internet has done is allowed our brains to streamline the research process so we can concentrate on the things that matter to our research instead of much of the endless dribble that some put out there under the guise of intelligent discussion. We can then flip through the nonsense and get to the meat of what a person is saying which then allows us to contemplate for ourselves. The same thing we did before without the lugging of hundreds of books and hours in the library. If the author is having trouble with reading it is because he has retrained himself not to read.