Slashdot Mirror
Do Children's E-Books Ruin Reading?
An anonymous reader writes "A fierce argument has begun over whether children are actually 'reading' new e-books or simply 'watching' them. As publishers pump increasing levels of interactivity into e-books, the New York Times and others argue that these highly-interactive, popular titles are ruining the purpose of reading. The NYT also worries that new e-book titles could distract kids from the tougher task of actually concentrating on literature: '[W]hat will become of the readers we've been: quiet, thoughtful, patient, abstracted, in a world where interactive can be too tempting to ignore?' Others, like Gizmodo, defend these new e-books, pointing at titles like Alice for the iPad, of which they blabber, 'For the first time in my life, I'm blown away by an interactive book design.' But, the NYT counters, 'What I really love [about traditional books] is their inertness. No matter how I shake Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, mushrooms don't tumble out of the upper margin, unlike the Alice for the iPad.'"
Interactive books have been around for decades - books with sliding tabs, sound effects when you press little buttons - those kinds of things. So I don't think e-books along the lines of that Alice one are a problem at all
What we should be concerned about is interactivity replacing the text rather than augmenting it. That's when it's a problem
Why are there no textadventures/"choose your own adventure"-books for the kindle or any other ereader?
Also, these interactive kiddie books might lead to the kindle 3 being like this: http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1910868
I don't consider myself a parent with any real life experience, being that I have only been one for 3 months, but I have some observations on how my son interacts with certain physical items in his new world:
1. He is not permitted to watch TV.
2. We read books to him a lot.
3. He listens to a lot of music tailored towards children (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIueuNdB2oM)
While he has some attention for books, especially ones where my mother recorded herself reading them and we play it for him while he listens, he has an amazing attention span for my iPhone or the TV. He will go out of his way to crane his neck around to look at the TV if it happens to be on (we don't watch much TV) or physically move himself to look at the TV if he is in a device which allows for him to do that.
I'm guessing that either he's fucking weird (certainly possible considering his parents) or all children love to watch shit. While he gets excited when I come home from work, it's nothing like he gets when he's watching my parents on Google Video Chat. If he's going to feel excited via a particular medium then I say I'm all for it--especially if it helps one particular child learn better than others.
Same way picture books have been ruining reading these last couple of centuries.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Children + new technology = loss of childhood dreams
Don't we all know this from episode I?
I see it similar to the Etude music player on the iPhone. It's a MIDI player that highlights the notes on the sheet music and on a simulation of a piano keyboard as the music is being played.
The Cat in the Hat eBook has several modes, one of which highlights the text as a voice reads the words. Another of which lets the kid touch something in the drawing, says the word and highlights it in the text (if it's in the passage on that page).
Neither replaces an audio performance (like an iTunes song or an audio book), and neither of which replace the physical static medium (like a piece of sheet music or a book), but both make a nice interactive presentation to help the viewer's brain make the connection of these very different sensations.
Tools can be used badly. That's nothing new either. You can use a TV to watch amazing documentaries, or crappy reality TV and "talk" shows like Jerry Springer. Kids can use it to watch garbage, or educational programming.
Interactive books are no different. They can be inert. They can distract from reading, or they can aid the reading process. There are fundamental differences between paper books and ebooks but blaming the format for poor execution is just weak. Since they can be more complex it becomes harder to differentiate, but that's what you have to do as a consumer....and there's nothing like word of mouth in mothers groups and in the school yard to help in that area.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I got into programming and computers through video games.
Anyone who thinks that interactive books can't be a force for good needs to go read Neal Stephenson.
Get a foreign language channel with cartoons. Or two. Or three. Languages, that is. Probably at least as many channels as well.
My cousin was speaking English almost as good as her native language (Bosnian/Serbian) by the time she was 5-6 years old from all the Cartoon Network she watched.
Basically, she was speaking a foreign language before she learned to read or write.
She is now studying to be a professor of English.
Also, when your kid starts to read, don't shun the comics in favor of books.
If possible, get him some comics in the foreign language he is picking up from the cartoons.
Amazon has international sites, holding books in the local language. But there are also online communities that scan comics. Even those in "foreign" languages.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I don't know why or how this trend started: to consider human beings (specially children) so delicate and fragile that every minor thing has the potential to ruin someone's mind forever. Traditional reading won't get outdated because it's a very efficient way to get high amounts of information in non-sequential order. So even if your children like to play with animated bleep-bloop books, they will eventually learn to read real books because they will need to. Necessity has been helping individuals and the entire species accomplish things since the dawn of time.
Call me old fashioned but one of the reasons I have always enjoyed reading traditional books is because the author only drops the hints at what the world in the book looks like but I actually paint the complete picture. This is the same reason why most movies based on books don't do well, because it is extremely difficult to compete with what we imagined that world to be in the detail and besides the imaginary world is individual to each reader. No two worlds probably look the same.
Unfortunately, the more we get into the interactive books which try to replace the written word with pictures (or even the ones which try to augment it), the more would we be limiting our imagination and seeing it from someone else's eyes, which almost certainly would result in less "different" people in the world. Most of us on slashdot are evolutionists and we do appreciate that it is this difference which results in our species evolving. Hell, it could be that Da Vinci etc. probably started looking at flying because they had heard or read fairy tales where humans flew, which then one day was realised by incremental advance in science. So in some ways, we would be limiting our potential by relying more on the visual medium rather than imagining the world.
What's under yellowstone?
Yes, folks, idiotic blather about how to raise a genius has come to the iPad. Ask people who have grown kids: they are who they are. There is astonishingly little you can do to change them. A rich environment beats a poor one, and you shouldn't starve or beat your children. Aside from that, just enjoy knowing them.
E-books are just a tool to engage those students who would otherwise not read. Start worrying when the kids aren't reading at all.
Translation: "It's new and different, and I'm frightened by it."
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased