Why, they say, we can't read books anymore

by Anne White

Have you read the Christian Science Monitor article about people being so distracted that they can't pay attention long enough to read anything demanding, even if they want to?  It popped up for me on Yahoo a few days ago, and I actually read it.  I do read things.  But then that's what I do.  And on the other end, there are people who really never did read much in the first place, so superimposing the distraction of technology on them isn't going to make a lot of difference.

I'm trying to put myself in the place of someone who used to read,  used to want to read, and who has actually changed that because of "digital distraction."  Is there really such a person?  Maybe, maybe not.  I'm more concerned about how this applies to children, learning or not learning.  If the office workers cited in the article were interrupted about every three minutes and took twenty-three minutes to get back on task-and these were adults--is it any easier for children who are constantly interrupted and distracted?  It sounds as if we're putting ourselves, or being put, into an ADHD experiment..  The question is, why would we want to do that to ourselves, and more so, to our children?

And check out this observation: "I see people of all ages around me abandoning the moment they're in to search for something better."  The author blames this, again, on the intrusion of technology, claiming that a friend found a miraculous cure by abandoning a fancier phone for a flip phone.  Wow, if that was all it took...the funny thing is, I don't even have a flip phone, and I still get distracted.  Not enough not to read, but just trying to keep all the usual balls in the air.  But this friend, apparently, could not bring himself to read books as long as he felt enslaved to his do-everything, don't-abandon-me piece of technology.  (Doesn't that remind you a bit of those Japanese electronic "virtual pet" toys, popular about fifteen years ago, that demanded to be fed and coddled hour on the hour?  Is it possible that those were just training wheels for "SmartBerries" and the rest?)  Well, anyway, there we seem to have our Exhibit A, somebody who would have read, could have read, but who was too busy to stop and seriously look a book in the eye. Well, good for him, at least.

But again, he's an adult. He knows better and he can make his own choices.  What concerns us are the children, our own and those around us.  Are we allowing them a great deal time free of distractions?  We may have to deliberately create that--I don't mean sabotaging the devices, but at least going places where they're not wanted or not allowed, and that can include "unplugged" places and times within our own homes.  If education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life, we need to be vigilant about guarding all three.

With young children, we can play with them, with our own gadgets turned off of course.  We can do as Charlotte Mason suggests in "Inconstant Kitty" (Formation of Character), and encourage them to finish the game, play with the same toy a bit longer, go a little slower and more carefully at building something.  We can provide toys with many possibilities.  We can even do as the mama in All-of-a-Kind Family did with chores: she hid buttons (and occasionally pennies) when the little girls were dusting, so that they had to do a very thorough job to find them all.

If we homeschool, we can practice the disciplines, create the habits that do teach them to concentrate, pay attention, observe--and then record observations non-electronically.  If we teach classes or work with groups of children, we can provide books and activities that absorb them, that make them suddenly come up for air and ask for another chapter, more time to keep working or watching something.

Some will say that is not exactly cutting-edge.  But in a world where distraction is the new normal--maybe it is.

Exciting Improvements to AO's Booklist Pages

In our ever-continuing quest to make Ambleside Online as user-friendly as possible, we're adding more links to free e-texts and free audiobooks while streamlining the website to make the pages cleaner and (hopefully) easier to see and work with.

You'll see some funny-looking little symbols all over our booklist pages, but don't let them put you off - they're very cool, and not hard to understand once you know what they mean. :-) There's a helpful key to these symbols at the top of each and every Year.

One very exciting change that's come about in the past few years is the advent of eReaders, and our favorite etext website, Project Gutenberg, has started including their texts in a variety of formats, including html, ePub and Kindle. So, we've gone through our entire booklist, and every text that PG offers, we've linked that as our first choice by hotlinking directly to the title of the book. If a title hotlinks somewhere else, PG doesn't have it yet.

We've also included a little circle that links to manybooks.net, where you can load the text directly to your Kindle for free. And for those who can figure out how to use the archive.org ebooks (we haven't figured it out ourselves!), we've included a tiny dot that links to their offering of the book; they also offer a variety of formats.

We're also working on linking Librivox audios to each Year. Where you see a little image that looks like a tiny pair of headphones (it's actually the Greek omega letter), click it to take you to the Librivox audio of that book.

We still have links where you can purchase a hard copy of the books, or a Kindle version, though these links are now shortened to a $ dollar sign (denotes a hard copy of the book) or the letter K (for the Kindle version). Basically, the $ or K within a parenthesis means it's a purchase, and the symbols outside the parentheses are free links. The purchase links are what support our website and forum. For twelve years, we paid for webspace ourselves, but since we've been using this system, our site has been self-supporting without us having to solicit donations.

Year 1 is complete, and we'd love some feedback! Years 2 and 3 are also almost done, and we'll continue through each Year, posting each one as it gets completed. We hope the changes make using AO even more convenient for you!

My Kindle, My Indispensable Homeschool Tool

by Wendi Capehart

A couple of years ago my youngest two homeschooled scholars and I took the Food Renegades' online nutrition course together. I emailed the nutrition text for the class to my Kindle account. This way the three of us could read it on the Kindle, which was more convenient.
Most people know you can underline and take notes with Kindle documents. But what I realized is that there was a new way I could use that feature. I could highlight points I wanted them to notice. I could highlight the point where I wanted them to stop a reading. I could add notes- and my notes are questions, narration questions. I could write the notes for myself, too. This way, when they finish a chapter I take the Kindle and revisit my notes for the book and see a handy reminder of any points I want to discuss with them, or questions I wanted to ask.

I imagine they could do the same- read my Kindle, underline stuff they found important or interesting, type in their own notes and response to my questions.

It's not *necessary,* but golly, gee, this gadget is FUN!

The Food Renegade Course may be a bit radical. If you agreed with the general content of Michael Pollan's books The Omnivore's Dilemma, and In Defense of Food, you will probably find this food and nutrition course a good fit for your family.
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