The impact of certain forms of technology on reading skills or reading habits - Essay Example

However, technological based reading has led to an increase in the reading of news, views, sexual content, general information, selected fields but has decreased the reading of literature. Electronic sources are now available for the students like iPods and kindle (of Amazon) that has greatly influenced the reading skills and habits of the students and in fact 34 percent of the students have access to their own iPhone. Today, majority of the schools increasingly have the access to digital media.

With such kind of availability of technology, students can readily access the reading materials in a digital format. The paper discusses the impact of the reading skills and habits with the introduction of technology. Reading is one of the oldest habits with the passion of the greatest personalities of all the time. The emergence of technology has led to some extraordinary change in the reading culture and habits of the students. Imagining today’s educational system without technology can be difficult for the students and the teachers.

A learning environment without interactive white boards, laptops, TVs and electronic devices would be difficult to identify as a conducive learning environment (Datta & Macdonald-Ross, 2002). Technology has made its existence in the reading behavior of the students. Although printed media still commands significant sales, reading is no longer confined to print reading as the scope of reading has evolved drastically in the recent days due to evolution of the internet to include web pages, e-papers, e-journals, websites, chat rooms, blogs, discussion boards, e-mails and other communication documents.

This has made reading and access to information easier and faster as a student can access information from the internet at their convenience (Gambrell, 2005). Reading habits can be determined by the number of minutes per day that are spent when