The book Against Digital Colonialism. Instructions to continue reading by Roberto Casati (Laterza, 2013), is an opportunity to think about the change brought by reading and its effects on education and teaching. Casati, philosopher and director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique at the Institut Nicod, discards side by side the contrast between apocalyptic and integrated, between the "playful rejection" of technocrats and the "messianic adoration" of technophiles, based on the assumption that it is about negotiating with digital innovation and education in the face of a rapidly changing human, cognitive and social landscape.
A landscape that, in its complexity, the school does not seem able to grasp because of the rigidity of its structure and the scarcity of resources and that the rest of the institutional agents show that they have no intention or real ability to discipline or change. Beyond (and against) the rhetoric of the digital school, the state of affairs and the attention that has opened up to ICT are actually an opportunity: to avoid a hasty and unjustified transmigration of all paper to digital, before its effects/benefits calculation has been foreseen; to open a reflection on our relationship with the 'machines' of information and on the way in which this influences learning and knowledge; to start real experiments in the world of school and with its real social actors, on contents and tools, with full knowledge of the facts and not on the basis of generic and propagandistic revivals of modernity.
In such a way that being digital - providing tools to rethink procedures, contents and didactic canons - is a real contribution to the education to contemporary citizenship and to the development of the critical conscience of students and teachers.
Warnings for reading
From a recent interview in video call by Enrico Manera to Roberto Casati is taken the following article, structured in a series of frequently asked questions (FAQ) on the topics of digital reading, knowledge acquisition, school.
1. Who is a digital native?
There are no digital natives, but at the limit of digital births; it is wrong to conceive that an inevitable and unavoidable anthropological mutation is taking place. The new generations exposed to digital are neither ill nor mutant. They are the same as our Palaeolithic ancestors, but they are in a different design situation.
2. Does multitasking really exist?
It is false that conscious attention can be given simultaneously to several activities that require activation of a semantic order: what happens in a digital environment is more often a task switching, similar to television zapping or surfing from site to site.
3. What kind of attention does reading a book require?
A paper book has an intensive way of storing information and is above all a technology of re-examination. It implies the quality of writing and a contract on attention between writer and reader. It allows information to be presented in such a way that the presenter knows that the reader will be able to review it more easily, and also index and analyse it with a greater attention-preserving effect.
4. Are there differences in the reading of a text in book format and e-reader or in digital format?
Reading an e-reader is less cognitively effective, even self-contained. Not only because it guarantees more attention, but also because of the fact that the book possesses corporeity and three-dimensionality: for photographic reading, for the fact that a book has a backside, a left-right sequence and a depth that help memorization. Deep reading takes place in a paper environment. Writing designed for the book format has a positive influence on the richness of the lexicon, especially of children, much more than the spoken language, which is much poorer. Good literature improves linguistic and cognitive ability. The type of writing designed for reading in the video is dictated by the competition of stimuli and provides for an idolization of knowledge and a simplification of semantic wealth.
5. Do video games improve cognitive skills?
A videogame involves a rapid interaction of sense-motor type, therefore it improves the stimuli of rapid response: useful activities for the training of a pilot of drones. It should also be borne in mind that the literature on the alleged benefits of video games has a link with the producers of video games. In particular, in Prenski's essay, which owes the lucky definition of digital natives.
to be continued in the next part https://zen.yandex.ru/media/id/5d878dc58d5b5f00ad32ca96/negotiate-on-digital-migration-conversation-with-roberto-casati-part-2-5d9090bd0ce57b00ada1aa83