English Class in the 21st century

I’ve been having problems with Tim Lauer’s feed for awhile now and thought maybe Tim was the latest victim of the China filter. But today the feed started working again, so I’m back reading Education/Technology.

Tim posted about a comment he found on iTunes when looking for podcasts. Tim came across a recording of The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin and one of the comments reads:

How great is that? And where was iTunes when I was reading the Grapes of Wrath?

Here’s the thing. What do you do with this kid? Is he/she cheating? Is there a difference between reading a book and listening to a book? I’m a huge fan of audible.com and usually have one or two audio books on my T5 at any given time. I have always found reading difficult and spent most of my elementary life in the ‘resource room’ getting extra help in reading and writing. So I understand how this student might feel.

I guess it comes down to the reason for reading the book. If the purpose for reading the book was to further reading development then yes the student would be cheating. But if the reason for reading the book is to have a dialog about characters, about U.S. history and the time period and comprehending the literature, then would listening to the book be sufficient?

Should this student be punished or should they be commended on their resourcefulness?

Technorati Tags: iTunes, Tim Lauer, Huckleberry Finn