“The question, really, isn’t whether people can still read or write the occasional book.  Of course they can.  When we begin using a new intellectual technology, we don’t immediately switch form one mental mode to another… The more profound shifts [in our brains] play out more slowly, over several generations, as the technology becomes ever more embedded in work, leisure, and education-in all the norms and practices that define a society and its culture.  How is the way we read changing? How is the way we write changing?  How is the way we think changing?  Those are the questions we should be asking-“ p.199

So if we are changing, what does this mean for EMU as we ask students to “pursue their life calling through scholarly inquiry, artistic creation, and guided practice”?  How we will be “a learning community marked by academic excellence, creative process, professional competence, and passionate Christian faith”?

• How do we use the internet and related technology well?
• How do we opt out of cultural changes that aren’t life giving?
• How do we retain the ability to read and engage the ‘long-form’ book?
• What does academic excellence mean in an age of The Shallows?

Nicholas Carr's website, his blog, his writing in the Atlantic, npr story about The Shallows,  at a bookstore (see below) talking about The Shallows; a response to the Shallows.  

Related work:

• New Yorker Article: How the internet gets inside us
• Chronicle of Higher Education Article: You're Distracted.  This professor can help. 
• PBS Frontline Show: Digital Nation.
• Sherry Turkle Ted Talk: Connected but Alone

Schedule of events related to The Shallows

Tuesday Luncheon Responses to the The Shallows with Jerry Holsopple, Walt Surratt, Dee Weikle,  October 28

Siva Vaidhyanathan November 11,  7pm  The Googlization of Everything

Dan Willingham  November 19, 4 pm, Main Stage Theater, Are new technologies changing the way kids think?

What is the impact of new digital technologies on reading, and the teaching of reading? I’ll examine data from three perspectives: direct effect, indirect effects, and broad effects. Bydirect effects, I mean ways that digital tools can be used to teach reading (e.g. instructional software) and to read text (i.e., eReaders). By indirect effects, I mean the possibility that the things students tend to do with digital technologies-- text messaging, gaming, watching videos, and communicating via social networks—might affect reading indirectly, for example by affording reading practice during these activities. By broad-based effects I mean that digital technologies may have far-reaching consequences for cognition; for example, surveys show that teachers think these technologies have shortened kids attention spans. I will conclude that most of what has been reported—good and bad--regarding the effects of digital technologies is overstated or misleading.

Daniel Willingham earned his B.A. from Duke University in 1983 and his Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Harvard University in 1990. He is currently Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia, where he has taught since 1992. Until about 2000, his research focused solely on the brain basis of learning and memory. Today, all of his research concerns the application of cognitive psychology to K-16 education. He writes the “Ask the Cognitive Scientist” column for American Educator magazine, and is the author of Why Don't Students Like School?, When Can You Trust the Experts?,  and Raising Readers in an Age of Distraction (forthcoming). His writing on education has appeared in thirteen languages.  A blog post by Dr. Willingham on Reading Critically.  Dan Willingham on Va Insight.  

February 2 Faculty Assembly

February 4 TGIW Follow-up Conversation from the Faculty Assembly, Common Grounds, 4pm 

Writer's Read with Mark Bauerlein February 5th, 6 pm, Common Grounds

Tuesday Luncheon with Jennifer Ulrich March 10, noon, What is scholarly communication?