Forget everything you thought you knew about reading.

Spritzing is a new way to read. Each word in a passage flashes sequentially in the same spot on the screen.

When spritzing, the page does the work for the reader. The “spritzer” trains his or her eyes on the same spot while the computer flashes the words in sequence.

“It’s fascinating,” said Ryan Bretag, Glenbrook North’s director of instructional technology. “With all these [new advancements], I rarely question the technology. It’s a matter of how we choose to use it.”

There are several speeds to spritzing, ranging from 250-1,000 words per minute, or w.p.m. According to Keith Rayner, a psycholinguist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the average college student reads at 200-400 w.p.m.

If dependent on spritz technology, reading expert Amy Goldsmith said a person would be missing out on part of the “give and take” of the dialogue in a book.

“It does seem like a very one way type of reading,” said Goldsmith. “The reading is being pushed out to you rather than that give and take.”

The spritzing website states that if you spritzed at the speed of 100 w.p.m., you could read “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” in 77 minutes.

Sophomore Brendon Johnson said he has his doubts with “spritzing,” but he also likes that if he used it for reading textbooks, he could finish his homework faster.

“I like how you can read stories faster,” said Johnson. “I don’t like that you can’t reread and you wouldn’t be able to active read.”

Bretag is hopeful about the new technology and what it would mean for students.

“We can’t be afraid,” said Bretag. “We have to embrace and investigate and be thoughtful. That’s out of the box thinking, and that’s what’s cool about it. That’s what fascinates me, someone’s really challenging the traditional method of reading.”