Do you read to your children from your iPad or other device, or encourage them to use an e-reader to read to you? Many of us do, at least on occasion — even I, who wrote here some weeks ago that I rarely read on my own iPad anymore because I want my children to see me reading books, recommended an app for creating fun picture books for travel last week. If you have a tablet or e-reader, why not add it to your child’s reading repertory as well?
The answer, according to Lisa Guernsey of the New America Foundation’s Early Education Initiative, is that when we read with a child on an e-reader, we may actually impede our child’s ability to learn. Ms. Guernsey interpreted recent research on childhood literacy for Time magazine, and found that parents interact differently with children over an e-reader than over a physical book. That difference may make children slower to read and comprehend a story.
Children sitting with a parent while an e-reader reads to them understand significantly less of what’s read than those hearing a parent read. Researchers at Temple University, where the study was done, noted that parents reading books aloud regularly asked children questions about the book: “What do you think will happen next?” Parents sitting with the child while a device read to them (like a LeapPad or some iPad apps) didn’t ask these questions, or relate images or incidents in the book to the child’s real life. Instead, their conversation was focused on how to use the device: “Careful! Push here. Hold it this way.”
Why Books Are Better than e-Books for Children – NYTimes.com
This suggests differential interface issues for analog (traditional print) and digital media. I still remember teaching my children how to hold a book, how to grasp the page corner, how to turn the page. My younger son insisted on grasping the top of the right-hand page from near the spine with his left hand. His right hand was busy holding the weight of the book. His grasping style was ideal for tearing a page out of the book, but not for turning a page in a way that left the book intact.
Board-books are a technology developed to help introduce the Human-to-Book interface at an even earlier age. The book pages are constructed of cardboard that has been laminated with plastic. This because toddlers (in the Freudian oral-phase) come to understand the books by chewing and slobbering all over them. These books withstand, and page turning behaviors follow along with parent instruction and supervision. Narration of the content runs in parallel.
(via emergentdigitalpractices)