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Learning To Read With Click and Jane
theodp writes "While earlier generations learned to Read with Dick and Jane, the NYT Magazine reports that today's tykes are getting their reading chops at online sites like Starfall (free) and One More Story (subscription). Quoting the Times Magazine: 'In their book "Freakonomics," Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt write that kids who grow up in houses packed with books fare better on school tests than those who grow up with fewer books.' So how will kids who learn to read online fare when they grow up?"
Aye tink day will bee find.
Hooked on Slashdot worked for me.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
LOL WTF OMG
This will be how kids speak if they learn to read only with the internet.
then again, some people already do.
Those of us who think they know everything annoy those of us who do.
and it shows. Freakonomicy!
I learned a lot of things by watching videos on Dick & Jane's paysite.
Good job on the link.
"One More Story" != http://news.slashdot.org/&%238221;http://www.onemorestory.com/tour/ontour.html&%238221;
YUCK!!!
Correlation is not causation. Presumably, it is not the mere presence of the books, shooting off their "bookly cosmic rays," that is the causal force which leads to children doing better on tests. Rather, there are two presumable possibilities, both of which probably work concurrently:
1. The kind of parents who own a lot of books are generally of above-average intelligence, and hence produce offspring that are as well.
2. The kind of parents who own a lot of books are likely to either read books to their children, encourage their children to read themselves.
The medium through with the information is conveyed likely matters very little, if at all, and so long as the children receive adequate instruction on how to access materials to read, and encouragement to actually do so, they will fare just fine.
It's not the books that cause the kids to do better. It's the fact that type types of parents who stock their houses with books are those who will produce better children. In other words, the books don't cause the good output, they simply reflect the environment that causes the good output. Thus whether one learns to read via books or computers isn't important; it's mainly what the parents do.
they do well in school ? Wow totally shocking. I would have thought that it was the kids that grew up playing video games that did well.
For one, even shorter attention spans than today ...
Second, they'll want to see a [citation needed], and if it's not on the net, they'll refuse to believe it exists.
Third, since they won't be "into dead tree newspapers", expect to see a rise in the number of people who bring their laptops into the john with them ... and also expect to hear more of "the sound of one hand clapping" ...
Fourth, most "science projects" will degenerate into "does it blend"?
Fifth, teachers will have to accept "a virus ate my homework" since they'll be saying "a virus ate your final mark" much of the time.
Children who grow up with the web should read incredibly well. The web is a massive library and without being able to read you won't be able to do much in internet and computer land. It solves a huge problem for parents and that problem is getting children interested in reading in the first place.
That said, a child growing up on the internet will be exposed to improper punctuation and grammar more frequently than a child growing up reading proofread and edited printed materials. That is probably a good thing. Those children will be less pedantic, and have less difficulty discerning intent and meaning from written text.
This is no different than the gamer generation versus their parents. The problem was not merely that the parents had difficulty with electronic interfaces, the problem was they had difficulty adapting to varied interfaces. The gamer generation can hope between operating systems, not to mention individual applications for the same purpose without too much difficulty. Their parents could learn and master an OS or application but when confronted with something different had/have a great deal of difficulty.
Why? Because every console video game has a unique and non-standard interface. Instead of learning the interfaces themselves, gamers learn the common elements that need to be and should be present in all video game interfaces. When they pick up a new game they don't stare at the foreign interface confused they start by figuring out how to navigate and then immediately proceed to look for the elements they know should be there and take note of extras found along the way.
That difference in how a new (insert almost anything here) is viewed while minor gives amazing flexibility when presented with tasks and arguably is the difference between genius and ignorance.
the kids that grew up playing video games that did well.
Story of my life.
OK, the whole point in the chapter in 'Freakonomics' was that while the number of books in a child's home IS CORRELATED with how well they do on school tests, IT IS NOT A CAUSAL RELATIONSHIP. Essentially, families that put an emphasis on learning tend to have both smart kids and a lot of books, but simply having a lot of books around does not appear to make children smarter. The person who quoted 'Freakonomics' in this article either intentionally misrepresented the point, or (more likely) completely missed the point. The point was that we should quit spreading the exact fallacy that is being spread here.
kids who grow up in houses packed with books fare better on school tests than those who grow up with fewer books
Hmm, that's a strange way to put it. Yes that statement is probably true, but it doesn't necessarily follow that if you pack any kid's house with books they would do better at school tests. I think it's more likely that parents who tend to read a lot, and therefore happen to have a lot of books in their house, also tend to place higher value on learning and knowledge in general and then pass on that inclination to their kids. It would be more useful to say that kids whose parents read a lot tend to do better on school tests than those whose parents read less.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Thing is, that if a family has a lot of books in their house, they are probably are reasonably wealthy. (In particular, not working class. In other words, people with money have kids that tend to do better in school.
You can control for that easily in the analysis, and I'm betting at least a few studies have done so. But you're certainly correct that middle-class (and above) kids are much more likely to do better. Malcolm Gladwell in "Outliers" explores one key aspect of this, which is a different and more engaged and encouraging parenting style.
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Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
I learned to read playing Dragon Warrior on NES. For years the teachers would tell me not to use "thee" and "thou".
Thing is, that if a family has a lot of books in their house, they are probably are reasonably wealthy. (In particular, not working class. In other words, people with money have kids that tend to do better in school.
Who modded this comment 'interesting'? more like troll...
Your comment is total BS. 2nd generation 'working class', we get by paycheck to paycheck, and that didn't keep us from acquiring a 4000+ volume library over the years - some from my own childhood.
It has entirely to do with interest in knowledge, not wealth. If you were raised with that, you'll wind up with books.
An interest in money doesn't correlate at all with knowledge - look around at the economy today. It took some finely focused stupidity to create this mess.
Books are NOT expensive. Compared to the plethora of other ways to waste 10-30 bucks, a book is an investment. A GOOD book is a gem.
Thing is, that if a family has a lot of books in their house, they are probably are reasonably wealthy. (In particular, not working class. In other words, people with money have kids that tend to do better in school.
While I think it's true that the children of the wealthy are more likely to get a better education, I don't think that's the main force at work here.
Reading a book is a very different experience than reading something online. It requires a greater commitment/attention span, and the reward in return is a greater understanding of the subject (for non-fiction) or immersion in the story (for fiction). This is assuming the books are good, of course.
I suspect that children who "learn to read online" are going to have an even worse attention span than I do (and mine is pretty terrible). I also suspect that they will have a much more superficial understanding of the things they've read, and that their comprehension of spelling and grammar will be abysmal.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
These days I believe being able to use a computer is nearly as important as knowing how to read. I believe a combination of books and online tools is the best. My kids would sit and listen to me read to them all day if I were up to it so I'm glad there are sites like Starfall that give them additional interaction.
More News on health and exercise related video games here:
http://www.healthygaming.com/blog/
Or, a really good source of free children's books is the International Children's Digital Library (www.childrenslibrary.org). It has thousands of free (current and public domain) books from around the world, many of them available in multiple languages.
- Ben Bederson Professor Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction Lab University of Maryland
That may be true, but it's not enough to tell which is the cause and which is effect. It could be that money is needed to buy books, and maybe poor people would have other priorities.
An alternative explanation would be that intelligent people read more, and intelligent people are more likely to be wealthy, because few people like being poor and if one's intelligent enough one will find ways to avoid poverty.
It could be that having books is a consequence of being wealthy, or being wealthy is a consequence of having books, or they are both consequences of another factor.
And what if having kids that do well in school is a cause, not a consequence, of having books at home? Because if kids do well at school they will have an incentive to read more, and will ask their parents to buy more books?
...graduates students teach computers to read!!
They'll probably post half baked, inaccurate stories with misleading summaries to forum based websites.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Thing is, that if a family has a lot of books in their house, they are probably are reasonably wealthy. (In particular, not working class. In other words, people with money have kids that tend to do better in school.
I'd say that a family that has a lot of books in their house probably gives a shit about learning things whether they're wealthy or not. When I was a kid, we were frequently at or below the poverty line in terms of family income, and my parents had never been wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but we had thousands of books in the house--far more than any of my friends with wealthy parents.
I'm sure there's a correlation between wealth and academic performance, but it's probably two effects from the same cause in most cases: the parents have a habit of learning things, and that makes them more likely to have better jobs and children that care about learning.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
Fortunately for me and my (lack of) game playing skills, he learned to count higher than ten of his own accord.
I am a Statistician. One false move and you are a Statistic
Kids, learn to read on your iPhone! SightWords puts the top high-frequency "Dolch" words onto your iPhone along with pronunciations. It's even listed as an Apple Staff Favorite: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=300907064&mt=8
...the techs call this babysitware. it has nothing to do with education and everything to do with a teachers union who demands teachers "need a break". couple this with computer lab aides who get paid under 10 bucks an hour and aren't technically allowed to teach anything.
THL phish sticks
An interest in money doesn't correlate at all with knowledge - look around at the economy today. It took some finely focused stupidity to create this mess
Even Madoff will come out of it wealthy, while you'll be moving into the 3rd generation of working class.
Reading a book is a very different experience than reading something online. It requires a greater commitment/attention span, and the reward in return is a greater understanding of the subject (for non-fiction) or immersion in the story (for fiction). This is assuming the books are good, of course.
I read books online at both the Baen free library http://www.baen.com/library/ and Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/. Other than being able to click directly to the chapter I'm at, and to scroll instead of turn the page, I don't consider it a "very different" experience. Perhaps you meant that short-form reading -magazines, newspapers, pamphlets, cereal boxes- is a very different experience from long-form reading. And most web material tends toward essays, articles and short blurbs. There's nothing about the words being displayed as pixels rather than blobs of ink that makes for a different experience, at least for me. I understand that some people find it more difficult to focus on a screen for long periods compared to paper. But then again, some people find glossy laptop screens to be annoying as well.
My mother also would often send me and my siblings to a local library after school so we would could get my homework done. In retrospect, that was one of the smartest decisions she ever made in raising me. It sure beat what I am sure is the insane cost of daycare, and it pretty much forced me to do my schoolwork. Even if for some reason I didn't want to do my homework, well, guess what, the only thing else to do at that point was read one of the hundreds of books sitting around me. Either way I ended up becoming a more educated individual, a definite win-win if there ever was one.
To those who moan about "they'll all learn chat-speak", I would say it depends on what a child reads online. Some sites have more value in them then others, and a good parent should try to direct their child's interest towards the more valuable ones. However, when you think about it, doesn't the same thing go for books? If you go into a library, yes you'll find Shakespear and Hemminway, but you'll also find a well-sized section with trashy romance novels. The question isn't how you read it, its what you read in the first place.
I agree. About 8 years ago I had an HP Jornada PDA, and I found a library of some thousands of books, classics and sci-fi that had been ripped and scanned into either txt or .lit formats that I could load on the PDA and read. Didn't bother me in the slightest. I read probably 100 books that way. Click for the next page, always have my book in my pocket, I can read at night (backlight) or during the daytime...it was a good experience.
I wish they had better ebook offerings for the iPhone, as mine is always with me. It would be great if you could buy the Kindle versions of books and load them on the iPhone.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Entirely different.
Books smell, and feel... and it's a very tactile thing. Books just plain feel good to hold, and are usable in pretty much any sort of light. Books don't wash out and become unusable if it's "too bright". Books don't have an "optimum viewing angle". Books don't take batteries. I can lay down on my back and read a book.
And reading a text on a computer is just plain annoying. It's like in Ferris Bueller, or High Fidelity.... there I am, enjoying the story, my disbelief fully suspended... and then someone just HAS to go and break that fourth wall. Shit.
A book I can stay absorbed, and I turn pages without a thought... visualizing everything in my head... I can't very well get completely engrossed in a story if I have to constantly hit the stupid ass scroll wheel or scroll button, or click some stupid ass link, or some stupid ass button to go to the next page.
Plus there is absolutely NOTHING like having your own private library. I constantly loan out books to people, and people are constantly loaning out books to me... Not to mention that wonderful smell of old paper, leather, and time.
I have a 2.5 year old son. About 6-8 months ago, I sat him on my lap and I clicked through the ABCs of starfall every night. He would point to letters, laugh at cut scenes, and basically bond with me. I let him put his hand on mine as I navigated the site. Then I started letting him click the mouse to advance the letters and games. I would point to the mouse cursor as it moved across the screen with his hand on my hand as I moved the mouse. He made the connection and started taking over the mouse. His gross motor skills frustrated him when trying to do some of the finer details of the website, but that improved to the point where he could handle the website. Part of the site has a concentration-esque game of flipping over tiles and matching them. Well, my wife and I were in the bedroom watching TV with him in the same room as he was surfing Starfall. We look up to see what he is doing and he had accessed the game already matched two tiles. Flabbergasted. I watched him do it, and it was all random. Then, he started remembered the letters and would return to the correct tile when he saw it again. The progress he has made has blown my mind. He reads his letters and numbers. He has been on parts of Starfall I didn't know existed or how to get to! Also, every night I review the letters and numbers with him using ToddlerLock on my G1. He looks forward to it and scoots over in his toddler sized bad for me. I have to fold myself in half to position next to him. Good times. And my 9 month daughter is already taking an interest in the G1. I had to extract it from her mouth today, turn it off, and let the drool dry out! Ahhh, I love my kids.
Your comment is total BS. 2nd generation 'working class', we get by paycheck to paycheck, and that didn't keep us from acquiring a 4000+ volume library over the years - some from my own childhood.
You appear to have fallen into the old pitfall of "taking statistics personally." You may have done an awesome job of exceeding the expected educational outcomes for your tax bracket, and you may even have found it pretty easy.
And it does nothing to change the fact that people with money generally have more books than people without.
Books are cheap, but the storage of the books is seen (by both (some)"wealthy" and (some)"poor") as expensive
However, "rich" parents with no interest in knowledge are more likely to indulge their offspring with an interest in books than "poor" parents with no interest in knowledge.
Hence, "rich" kids will tend to have more exposure to books than "poor" kids (excepting those cross-class boundaries of those interested in knowledge for its own sake)
"She's furniture with a pulse"
I'm not sure that is entirely accurate - books in general are not that expensive, but some (arguably necessary) books ARE somewhat expensive. As any professional or college student, or many precocious high school students, can attest.
It really all depends on many factors: areas of knowledge, level of education we're talking about, geographical location, and availability of used books sales.
Some of this is balanced out now by easy access to public libraries and to basic information online (in my opinion, the true value of the internet). But this doesn't apply to every branch of knowledge, or every location, in the same way - e.g.: I still get requests to bring a medical book or two when I visit family out of the US.
I do agree with you on two things:
- General non-specialized books are a MUCH better value in the US than anything else you could buy for your family at that price range.
Both for direct benefits (~1-3 bucks per hour, divided by the # of readers), and indirect benefits (literacy, ability to focus, and general education).
- The 'wealth difference' levels out pretty quickly (assuming access to a good public library system), and is not terribly relevant for any middle-class family.
It's not a matter of accumulating books as if they were jewelry - I doubt the wealthier family with 50000 books is that much better than the family with 5000, if those 5K are good books (and why would you keep any other?).
It's really a matter of inculcating a reading habit, and the skills that come with that - and in that sense, 'book flow', as in easy/ongoing access to unread books, is more important than 'book wealth' (very large collections).
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
Books don't have an "optimum viewing angle" because all viewing angles are equally bad. No matter how you hold the book either your arms or you neck will get tired. I'll always read on screen rather than paper if I have the choice. The only advantage of books is the higher resolution printing, but you can increase the screen text size and sit further back to compensate.
I was wondering if anyone would get to this point. Our family was not at all rich and we never had lots of books around, let alone a house packed with them, but we went to the library at least twice a month. These days, I enjoy reading news stories and short articles on line, but I don't think I'll ever lose the enjoyment of turning that first page of a new book.
At least i don't have to turn some stupid ass page.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
(or is it that people with books generally have more money than people without?)
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
It's not just the viewing experience. Computers almost always do something crazy to my attention span; I can read a book for a long time, but on a computer I'd struggle to concentrate. It happens with almost everything, watching movies, reading, writing on a computer - there's an overwhelming feeling that I could just be doing something else too. I'm just too weak willed and...
How do you make a small fortune? Start with a large one.
We're raising a generation who will base their life philosophies on bad car analogies.
Have gnu, will travel.
That phrase bothers me.
I know there's a lot of flotsam in the threads, but "citation needed" comes out really arrogant because either he's right and Mr. Citation won't admit it, or he's wrong and Mr. C. won't bother to post the counter example. It's "I'm not even going to bother to read your post at all" - the internet version of "Talk to the Hand".
Your average poster with solid karma is likely to be at least half right, but botching a detail. Anwswer the thread instead.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I hear you. There's nothing like a book. However, I'm also a fan of electronic text. Some reasons are...
I can pack a couple books in a easy-to-carry form factor. Even a single "pocket book" softcover is larger than my trusty 'ole PDA. And when I'm almost done with the book I'm reading, no problem, I have the other one (or several) loaded and ready to go.
I don't need a nightlight to read my book in bed. No problems with bad lighting. The PDA's backlight keeps everything nice and easy to see (if it does sacrifice my battery charge).
Easy to bookmark and annotate. I can do these things to my heart's content without worrying about losing a bookmark or damaging my book.
As for your comments...
I've read my electronic books on my back. I've never had to worry about an "optimum viewing angle". I have had to scurry for a charger to keep my PDA from shutting down - usually at night when I'm using that power-hungry backlight. I've never had the page turning or scrolling interupt my ability to become absorbed in a book.
Again - I'm a fan of having a library. I'm a fan of the tactile feel of a book. I enjoy sitting back with a book even if there are inconveniences in doing so. But I've also found that there are advantages to the electronic format as well. And if I had my way, every physical book I buy (and I'll continue to buy them) would come with an electronic copy to fill my digital library as well.
I did the same thing. Recently, I've replaced my 12" Lenovo with a 10" netbook for my primary device to read off of. At $400 (yeah, Lenovo again) it beats holy hell out of a Kindle / Sony ereader / whatever.
I'll go further.
It's a dead heat between ReadWrite, Math, and CompSci. A perfect tripod.
We wail and moan the lack of computer skills, and if you don't learn early how the computerized age mindset works at a gut level, it's basically like a lost language. Unless they wake up and study like demons later say in college, such as my exact generational strata, the minute they graduate without comp skills they get hosed applying for a job.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
But did you know that there are many places around the world where you can have access to 200,000 or more books, for free? Its called a library. And while not everyone can afford books, almost anyone can go into a public library and read all they want.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
It matters not one bit whether they learn to read on my lap in front of a physical book, or on my lap in front of a computer screen. The important thing is that I'm there teaching them how to expand their knowledge. After they've learned how to read, I think it's extremely important that they learn how to use computing and the internet to keep expanding their knowledge. If I can give them a computing environment to explore and learn to exploit, you bet I will. They will need that skill as an adult.
They were right - the revolution did not get televised. It was posted on YouTube instead. All in 120 characters. SLOOSH!
...people with money generally have more books than people without.
Within the context established by previous posts (where 'people without money' == 'working class'), above quote is a bald-faced assertion and more than likely wrong.
From what I've seen of middle class life styles in America, most people in the USA who have significant disposable income have more space devoted to their collections of CDs, DVDs, and computer games than they do in bookshelves. And then there is the camper with the water ski boat on the trailer, the TV in every room, the gaming computer for each family member, and the multiple iPods. With all that to play with, there is not a whole lot of time left for reading, so of course a big home library is not that important to the lifestyle.
A single bookcase in the study does not a home library make. A working class home with boxes of used paperbacks stacked in the corners of the living room and the bedrooms, brought home from the Goodwill Store, is a more literate home.
There are an awful lot of people in the USA who are living close to the hand to mouth level who are more literate than most of the upper middle class. Books, especially used paperbacks, are cheaper and in many ways much more satisfying entertainment than the unaffordable toys of the middle class.
I do not think that number of books in the house is related to disposable income.
Large numbers of people with significant disposable income spend it on ski lift tickets, fancy automobiles, DVDs, iPods, and other non-literary goodies. Large numbers of people who have little disposable income find their entertainment at the used book section of the local Goodwill store and at the local library. Turning the kids loose in the children's section of a library or used book store has always been, and still is, a common way to brighten a child's day.
Are there successful equivalents for teaching adults to read?
I tend to use it strictly literally. That is:
You might have a good point, but I have sufficient doubt that I won't take it on faith without numbers to back it up. Either I'm too lazy, or I can't find that information. Either provide sufficient evidence to convince me, or we'll have to agree to disagree.
I think "citation needed" is a lot more succinct than all of that, and I think it's useful to know which of our ideas are based in actual fact, and which are merely speculation we've repeated until we believe it's fact.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Thing is, that if a family has a lot of books in their house, they are probably are reasonably wealthy. ...
Sorry, but that old socialist chestnut doesn't hold up. It's been proven time and again that the importance placed on reading and education by the family and culture makes the difference. This is especially true in countries with public libraries.
I grew up with a single, working parent from a lower economic background, but we read together every night form the time I was a toddler thanks to the public library and reading programs. I graduated 4th in my class and did rather well, thank you, despite coming from a working class background.
Granted I got teased a lot and called geeky...
I had never head of either of these. I brought up starfall and thought it was fantastic. I called my kindergartner over to show him d was informed that they use that in school (the early reader part). So I called my sister-in-law to recommend it for her preschooler who has shown an interest to find out they use it. at his preschool as will (the learning the ABC's part) I was ready to pay up for a subscription to one more story, but after looking at it , realized that stay all was much better. Stanford encourages the child to read while one more story just reads to the child.
I disagree on this one. I hair a small tablet PC which is perfect size for reading (Sam as a book) and I have a Sony PR 5-505. I refuse to read on the tablet but have red hundreds of novels on the Sony. It is way to easy to get distracted reading on a computer. The screen on the Sony is ***So*** much easier in the eyes. The form factor of the Sony is way better for holding + reading. It is worth the $300 for the additional dedicated divice I used a Toshiba e805 before the Sony & thought it was great, and it was) but after using the Sony for a week or two, I'll never go back.
Mine too and look how I turned out.
The best way of predicting how children will turn out is to look at their parents (this was also pointed out by Dubner). So, the grandparent is, in a sense, correct.
A generation taught to read online will be very rarely exposed to the kind of polished prose that can teach you both style and clear thinking. Almost any book ever published has been first rewritten by its author once or a dozen times and then vetted by an editor for spelling, grammar, style, structure and contents. Just about everything on the net is first draft - this present post included.
So it is not just the atrocious apostrophes, the equally asses, the complementary compliments and their brethren that will haunt them, but a flabby race-to-the-first-post argumentative style that has no patience for intellectual rigour.
Mind, that goes for us old farts, too. Lately, I have been forcing myself off the computer and into the library to refresh my ear for language with past and present masters of the craft. Reading good literature - as opposed to paperback fantasy and such dross - is a revelation. You can see the time the author has lavished on the crafting of his/her sentences to make them both beautiful and persuasive carriers of argument.
I wish there was a way of transferring this to the internet, but, although many blogging sites allow authors to tinker with their posts, it would be futile to go through several drafts, as there are no readers to dig into bygone articles to see how they are shaping up after five months of revisions...
"if a family has a lot of books in their house, they are probably are reasonably wealthy"
I realize that you have a possible disclaimer in using using the word "probably" but I don't think it's accurate. I doubt my story is all that unique. I grew up very poor but we always had quite a number of books around. So I started on those and then when we moved near a library I spent most of my free time either at this new treasure trove or at home reading the piles of books that I checked out. It wasn't long before the librarians knew my library card number off by heart.
In other words - poverty had very little to do with my obsession with reading. I still didn't do very well in school mind you. Mostly due to the fact that I found most of it pointless. Once again, nothing to do with lack of money.
---
PhreezeVi
Where facts are few, experts are many.
- Donald R. Gannon
I wish they had better ebook offerings for the iPhone, as mine is always with me. It would be great if you could buy the Kindle versions of books and load them on the iPhone.
I use Bookshelf. I've used its predecessor on the 1.x iPhone before the app store and found it to be quite nice for loading up txt and html. I'll even download PDFs and convert them for text for offline reading. Funny they metioned Freakonomics, because I read that on my iPhone too.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
My 3.5 year old now has better skills than many adults I've seen. Lat year, we set up his on account, with large icons, slow double-click speed, single-button mouse, etc. Very kid-friendly. Poissonrouge.com did the rest. My kid now has a password to get into his account (his name) he surfs YouTube for cartoons, and had developed great fine motor skills using the mouse. While he hasn't learned to read much yet, he has developed problem solving skills and counting skills. I am totally comfortable with him using my iPod touch w/o supervision.
Interesting point ... yesterday I went bookcase shopping and discovered that all the stores that used to carry low-priced bookcases don't anymore (Kmart, Target, Walmart); only DVD cabinets.
I thought the entire point of that section of Freakonomics was not that kids with lots of books scored well on tests (which was proven wrong when governments stepped in and offered free books) - but that
1) Kids who do well on tests are usually smart kids.
2) Kids are smart usually because their parents are smart.
3) Smart parents generally have more books in their home anyway.
The entire point of the article was that correlation doesn't imply causation. What this means is that even if kids learn to read from the computer, and there are fewer "books" in the home as readers choose to read from the Internet or from Kindle or whatever won't actually have an impact on learning.
I used to work for NetQoS. I no longer do, but want to keep the excellent karma attached to this account.
Libraries are great unless you are a child who has a parent that doesn't bother to transport you there.
Kids value what their parents value, religion, money, books, knowledge.
The current generation can actually benefit from the fact that some parents Don't care. Because when parents don't care, they let their kid do what they want. So when the kid finds something like starfall.com and is interested, the parent isn't there to stamp out their dream, and the learn to read and enjoy reading. Thus breaking the cycle that most low income people are stuck in, one of ignorance and stupid actions because of that ignorance.