literary pedagogy

This essay is a hypothesis with focus on the generational shift from deep attention, towards hyper attention in cognitive modes. Deep attention is a cognitive mode witch will allow you to focus long term, problemsolving, analyzing etc. Reading a long novella, solving a mathproblem. Hyper attention is the cognitive mode where you multitask, lots of minor tasks at once, as in playing a videogame, using social media, etc. In this mode your focus has a short timeline and tends to affect your attention span conserning long time problemsolving.
The article discusses the educational preparedness in the future, when this problem is likely to affect us. As a society the problem of this generational shift has already started to show itself,
but the educational system need to prepare for the changes that will arise, when todays 10 year olds enter the area of higher education. It is suggested that being prepared could be to use new pedagogical models, that provide greater stimulation than the typical classrom.
The author concludes that the two cognitive modes are and should be side by side, and that educators has a responsibility to adapt to the changes that are surfacing now, and to the changes that will only increase in the years ahead.

This article discusses the changing role of literature in the contemporary media landscape. Literary scholarship may well maintain its importance in the digitalizing world, but this requires it to engage in an open dialogue with cultural and media studies. It is important that more attention is paid to contemporary literature as well as to new media offering significant pedagogical possibilities, which should be better acknowledged. The article's main focus is on the emerging field of digital literature. Cybertextuality, especially, is fundamentally changing our notions of the integrity of a literary work, reading, writing and interpretation. I attempt to describe and put into context one sample case of cybertextuality, The Impermanence Agent by Noah Wardrip-Fruin et al. Finally, I discuss some of the practical problems faced by teachers who introduce digital literature in their classrooms.

(Source: Author's abstract)

Reprinted in Online Learning Vol 2: Digital Pedagogies (Sage, New York, 2011)