Page 1 - Writing Moves Digital Toolbox
P. 1
Digital
Toolbox
Using Digital Tools to Support
Reading, Writing, Collaboration,
and Creativity
SECTION 1
INTRODUCTION Purpose
Reading in Digital Spaces
In this digital age, readers and
writers can employ a number of Most of us move fluidly between reading in print and reading the
digital tools that will support their screens of our phones, tablets, or computers many times in a day,
writing process, their reading sometimes reading for different purposes (getting text messages,
process, their collaborative checking Facebook updates, reading a notice on a physical
composing, and other creative bulletin board) or sometimes for the same purpose across modes
work. By allowing flexibility (between newsprint and an online news site, between a print
when reading and writing on book and an ebook). With longer texts, as you go from reading on
the screen, these tools position the page to reading on the screen, you’ll want to develop your own
us to use digital spaces and strategies for working with digital text and making your online
texts as sites of production, and reading an active process.
they very often support rich
collaborative undertakings. While In Chapter 3, we introduced the idea of customization to support
you’ll continue to use earlier on-screen reading—finding and trying out reading apps that will
technologies, like print and pencil work on your preferred devices and that will allow you to high-
and paper, you’re likely to keep light, annotate, and comment on the text you’re reading. Now we’ll
adding newer technologies to the suggest a few that have worked for us and our students. Most
mix. We’ll share some examples apps are available for both computers and phones/tablets, and
of tools, platforms, and other sites most of the ones we mention have a free or inexpensive version.
that we’ve been finding helpful
for these purposes. Such reading apps are valuable because they help to counter the
common downside of reading on the screen—the tendency to
skim quickly over material and jump from page to page in ways
that work against the deep understanding of a text. Annotating a
digital text in the same ways you have learned to do with a print
text will slow down your reading, let you focus on the details of
an argument or narrative, give you the opportunity to respond
in more complex ways, and help you recall what you’ve found
significant in the text. As you highlight and comment on texts,
you will be able to enact the slow, careful reading process often
called for in academic settings. An active digital reading process
will help you think critically about the pieces you read as you
adopt an active stance.
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