Do eBooks encourage kids to read more, or simply distract them?
Learning to read is one of the building blocks to any kid’s education.
And if you have a reluctant reader, you’ll do just about anything to get them reading more. But with ebooks and apps gaining more and more momentum in kids education and entertainment, are we following the right path in letting our kids read from the screen instead of the page?
While there’s been a bit of research looking at the impact of ebooks on kids aged eight years and up, there’s not been so much covering the pre-schooler age bracket.
The Joan Ganz Cooney Centre, an independent research and innovation lab that focuses on the challenges of educating children in a rapidly changing media landscape, recently conducted some ‘Quick Reports’ looking at Print Books vs. eBooks for kids aged 3 – 6 years old.
The study asked 32 parents and their pre-schooler aged kids to read a print book, a ‘basic’ ebook and an ‘enhanced’ ebook. It should be noted here that a ‘basic’ ebook is essentially a print book put into a digital format with minimal features like highlighting text and audio narration, and an ‘enhanced’ ebook is one that feature more interactive elements like games, videos and animations.
Key findings from the report included the similarity in interactions when families read print books and basic ebooks. These forms of books encouraged ‘content-related actions’, that is, pointing out elements from the story, labelling illustrations and more verbal elaboration than what is written on the page. In contrast, when the families read the enhanced ebooks, these interactions lessened, and the kids recalled fewer narrative details than those that read the print book of the same title.
Based on ‘overall engagement’ - a composite measure of parent-child interaction, child-book interaction, parent-book interaction, and signs of enjoyment- the study found that only 6% of families were more engaged with the e-book than the print book.
While the researchers agree that there needs to be more study on the topic, a simple takeaway from this research is that if you’re looking for reading benefits similar to the printed page - go for the simple ebook.
Do your kids show a preference between print books and ebooks?
No comments:
Post a Comment