One of the natural human needs is not only to express their own thoughts, aspirations and dreams, but also record them by means of oral or written language. It is the word that enables cultural transmission thanks to which the man can leave a permanent trace. Various texts have always accompanied us, playing a crucial role in the development of civilization and culture. For centuries, books and other cultural texts have also been the most important medium of knowledge passed from one generation to another one. It can be said that from the first wall paintings in the caves to graffities on the walls of modern cities, people have communicated via various transmitters, including manually written, printed, and now increasingly digital.
Especially nowadays, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, in the times of dynamic transformations regarding all aspects of human life, the topic of the impact of social media on the reading culture should be discussed. The era of intensive development of modern media, changing our world faster than Gutenberg's invention, undoubtedly transforms the basic models of communication styles, existing reception habits and traditional behaviours of readers. Therefore, the reality of the twenty-first century poses new challenges, especially for Polish teachers, pedagogues and librarians. An important problem of contemporary school didactics is not only non-reading community of teenagers, but also the way of communicating vital content to students, related to the search for valuable literary texts that can broaden the range of modern reality, will motivate reflection and make a young person willing to commence a reading adventure. Teenage technology lovers need the right motivation, hence a good form of encouraging the youth to read may be the one related to the reality of digital media, the virtual world, and therefore originating from the environment close to the student of new era.
Contemporary cultural and literary education creates great opportunities to explore literary vortals during Polish language lessons. Thus, it is certainly worth considering what role social media can play in the reading education of young people and what is the purpose of using the potential of social networks by Polish teachers. What is more, one of the spheres of social media are groups dedicated to literature, which are forms of cooperation of people who have primarily reading passions and the ones looking for opportunities to acquire them. The essence of their functioning – like other portals of this type – is to facilitate the relationships between the users, as well as to provide them with tools that allow to co-create the specific content.
Furthermore, one can use social media to encourage students to visit websites dedicated to the topic of literature, where literary discussions take place. Virtual dialogue in the forum can foster the creation of reading habits of teenagers. In addition, social media, popular among young people, might become the beginning of broadly understood literary and cultural education by referring to other social networking sites, because the use of the Internet gives many possibilities, for instance redirecting users to specialist websites.
The environment of the Internet, which is a place where young people usually spend a lot of time, can be a favourable space to conduct didactic activities promoting reading and shaping teenage reading culture. If we understand the educational process as the meeting of the teacher with the student, the teacher's mission will be to initiate meetings not only at school, but also in the natural environment of the young readers, namely social media. We are only left with the question if Polish teachers are ready for changes in the philosophy of teaching that are inevitable.
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