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“It’s easier to read on the Internet—you just click on what you want to read…”

Abilities and skills needed for reading on the Internet

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Abstract

Today’s youth spend a lot of time on the Internet where they meet a multimodal world. The focus in the present study has been on the skills and abilities needed for on-line reading. This study explores reading on the Internet, with pairs of Swedish students aged 10 and 15. The pairs completed tasks on the Internet and these sessions were video-taped. Five main categories of skills and abilities were found: traditional literacy, multimodal literacy, path-finding, IT abilities, and information abilities. The results support earlier research in the field at large, and also add to the literature on on-line reading, in areas such as the crucial need for the ability to spell and knowing web address conventions in English.

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Acknowledgement

The authors gratefully acknowledges Professor Lisbeth Åberg-Bengtsson for help and support during the research process and valuable points of view on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Maria Rasmusson.

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Rasmusson, M., Eklund, M. “It’s easier to read on the Internet—you just click on what you want to read…”. Educ Inf Technol 18, 401–419 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-012-9190-3

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