Module 6: Final Article Analysis Reflection- ED 6376

Analysis of Difficulties of Spanish Teachers to Improve 
Students’ Digital Reading Competence

Technology has become part of everyday life in one aspect or another. It has created a new era of a digital world. Digital technologies have changed the way many tasks are done. Especially in the realm of education, digitization has become the new norm in various ways. Teachers and students alike have felt the impact of this shift to digital educational formats. These technologies have changed the way teachers instruct, as well as the way students learn. It has evolved into online lessons and digital materials and texts. Technology has transformed the manner in which digital texts are produced and displayed. Which has led students to learn digital skills to be able to read these forms of texts accurately. It has also led to the rise of a new form of literacy that students must have in order to be successful readers.

    The article I chose to analyze this week is about the difficulties Spanish teachers are having in improving their student's digital reading comprehension. This case study found that learning processes based on digital reading are still underdeveloped and teaching staff in a large majority expresses a lack of preparation, training, and resources available in the school for the effective development of teaching that encourages successful digital reading proficiency of students. The majority of today's information is now presented in some form of digital text. New technologies have brought about vast ways of reading texts online. The new formats and skills needed to comprehend a multitude of information are vital.  So it is crucial that students build the digital literacy skills necessary to be successful within the digits world.

    In conclusion, as I reflect on this article, as an educator I can relate to having some of my students struggle with digital texts. Especially when it comes to my English as a second language learner. It seems that many of my students transitioning from Spanish to English, tend to do much better with print text as opposed to digital texts usually. I believe it is because as this article states, their digital literacy skills are underdeveloped and it is harder for them to manipulate digital texts. Which in turn affects their overall comprehension of the text they are trying to read. I believe in these cases educators must first assure their students have a strong reading foundation in print text first before expecting full comprehension of digital texts. Although, I do feel it is vital to continue to expose them to various forms of digital texts while they are explicitly taught digital literacy skills. This will ultimately lead to better digital reading comprehension overall. Like with most things, practice makes things close to perfect.

Reference 

Cano-Vasquez, Esteban. (2017).  Analysis of Difficulties of Spanish Teachers to Improve Students’ Digital Reading Competence. A Case Study within the PISA  Framework. Pedagogy Vol. 125, No. 1, pp. 175–194, 2017.