1.+Ahoy,+Mateys!

 Imagine if you will, our students as pirates, searching across vast oceans (of information) looking for buried treasure...What tools would they need to help them? How do they know they have found the best treasure? What is the most effective way to get there? How do they decipher the map they have been given to find it?

We have set up our workshop using this analogy to help you better understand how many of our students sometimes feel as they are "floating over the sea of knowledge" and reading what they can find on the internet like pirates after buried treasure!

In developing our “PD opportunity” for literacy leaders and new Teacher Librarians, we started our research by following the work of Julie Coiro and Donald Leu from the University of Connecticut who have been doing extensive research with new literacies and online reading comprehension. For the purposes of our “workshop”, we have focused on five key strategies for online reading as outlined in Coiro’s article, “Making Sense of Online Text” (2005).

**1) Identifying Important Questions**

media type="custom" key="13510830" width="60" height="60" align="right" **2) Analyzing Search Results**




 * 3) Navigating a Website**




 * 4) Synthesizing and Interpreting Information**


 * 5) Skimming and Scanning**

Within each page, we have provided some background information, along with some example lessons that could be used in a library program or classroom to begin implementing these online reading strategies right away! Ahoy, mates!

Why do we need to think about reading online distinctly from reading in a print environment? What skills do we and our students need to develop to read effectively online? "A growing collection of research suggests that students require new comprehension skills and strategies to effectively read and learn from text on the Internet" (Coiro, 2005). Micheal Wesch's video, "The Machine is using us," offers a thought-provoking analysis of reading and writing online.

media type="youtube" key="NLlGopyXT_g" height="315" width="420" align="center"

According to Wikipedia (2011), “Reading is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols in order to construct or derive meaning (reading comprehension). It is a means of language acquisition, of communication, and of sharing information and ideas. Like all language, it is a complex interaction between the text and the reader which is shaped by the reader’s prior knowledge, experiences, attitude, and language community which is culturally and socially situated. The reading process requires continuous practice, development, and refinement.”

No matter what format the text of language appears (print or screen), this definition holds true for all of our students. However, in today’s learning environment, as teachers (and librarians) we are faced with students who must now contend with not only the printed word on a page, but the myriad of symbols, images, hyperlinks, audio stimuli and words that are flying across the “page” of a computer screen. “The internet provides new text formats, new purposes for reading, and new ways to interact with information that can confuse and overwhelm people taught to extract meaning from only conventional print” (Coiro, 2003). Many of the reading strategies that we have currently employed with printed text are easily transferable to online reading habits however, due to the nature of the digital learning and reading environment, new and unique reading strategies are required.

There is no escaping it, our students are spending more and more time learning, reading, researching and playing online than ever before. According to the Pew Internet Report of May 2010, 94% of teens are going online to do research for school assignments (Rainie, 2011). We can only assume that these statistics will continually increase with the influx of tablets, ipods, netbooks and the infusion of even more technology into our classrooms. Our jobs as reading teachers and literacy leaders must go beyond preparing our students to be lifelong readers of books and textbooks to provide them with the strategies and tools to read effectively online.

We are living in a world consumed with information and the ability to access that information instantaneously at the touch of a button. "If people cannot undertake this knowledge enrichment process they are disadvantaged, and the education system has failed to give them adequate literacy skills" (Sutherland-Smith, 2002, p. 662). As global citizens, our students must gain the skills required to find, scan, analyse, evaluate, synthesize and process what they read online in order to belong in this increasingly participatory culture. According to Sutherland-Smith (2002), "In web-based reading, students rarely follow a linear-sequential reading model...Students jump from one place to another and are cued by colour, in the form of previously determined links, to other information sites" (p. 665). Students need to go beyond their traditional reading strategies and require higher levels of thinking skills in order to evaluate, differentiate and understand the material they are experiencing online.

**This graphic shows a clear and concise difference in the reading skills and strategies used ONLINE VS. BOOKS: **

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