There has been much talk lately about use of ebook readers in schools, and what it all means, exactly. I think ebook readers can be a fabulous tool for older kids, but anyone who thinks they will replace paper for little kids has obviously not spent much time in a primary school! Let me reassure those people that paper, for kids, will survive for quite some time, and not for sentimental reasons either. It has to do with both the cognitive and tactile ways that kids learn.
1) The Cognitive Issue
Children learn in stages. They walk before they run, they speak in single words before they string together sentences and so on. Technology doesn’t change that. Learning to read happens in stages too. The child must first understand that the printed thing they are being shown contains words, which represent language. And then they must understand how to navigate through this language.
Part of assessing the reading readiness of a small child involves observing them interacting with the book as a physical object. I have done reading readiness assessments on preschoolers before, and trust me, they literally start with ‘is the child holding the book right side up?’ and go from there.
Do they try to turn the pages themselves? And yes, there does need to be actual, physical pages in order to assess this—pages go from left to right in English, but they go from right to left in Hebrew, for example. If you can’t see the child try to hold the book, turn the pages and touch the words as they play at reading, you can’t assess whether they have already figured out the way their language works when printed.
Does the child rely on other cues to try and tell the story? Do they play-read, for example, by describing to you the illustrations? Do they reach the final page in the book and announce ‘the end’ thus demonstrating that they understand how to determine their place in the text? They need the visual cues for this. And you need to see them interact with the physical object so that you can assess whether they are using these cues!
2) Tactile Learning
Which brings me to point number two: children are very touchy-feely little critters. They like–and need—to explore and learn through touch. Take math, for example. There is a very robust genre of educational product that has developed to address this need. It’s called the ‘math manipulative’ and my school has bin after bin of them: dinosaurs, teddy bears, race cars and so on. You give the child a handful and have them count them out. If you have seven dinosaurs right now and I gave you three more, how many dinosaurs would you have? How many red dinosaurs? How many green ones? And the child picks up each dinosaur and counts out the number as they decode the problem. A calculator can’t replace that!
Literacy is much the same process. When I am introducing a new story to my French as a second language classes, I often will bring in puppets of the main characters. One of the stories is about a cat who searches for a home, and finally finds one with a little boy. The first time I act out the story for the children using the puppets, I have the boy puppet embrace the cat puppet dramatically and I make loud smooching noises. The children think it is absolutely hilarious. And when we go to read the text directly, they have full comprehension and know exactly when we get to that part! I have another story I teach where the main character is a dog belonging to my principal. A large part of the entertainment value comes from the fact that the children all know the real, actual dog.
So, my conclusion? Ebooks—like calculators—can be wonderful tools for older children, who are past the point of needing to understand reading as a concept. They can save valuable paper and cut down on the heavy load they carry in their backpacks each day. But for the younger child, there will always be a market for paper books, and it has nothing to do with sentiment or nostalgia or the smell of paper or anything so ridiculous. What it comes down to is this: ebooks are the new calculator. Paper books are the new math manipulative. And the children will need both of them at varying stages of their learning lives.
As a pediatrician who practiced for over 37 years(just retired-hooray!) I couldn’t agree more. I don’t profess to be an educational expert and can;t comment about reading readiness etc. But there is another issue that I think it is very important and that is being read to aloud as both an interactive process and more specifically as a family activity. I throughout my career have always emphasized the importance of parents reading to their children even infants. The act of reading aloud to a child and allowing the child to physically interact with the book, dialoging with the child point to the pictures etc are super important in stimulating a interest in books. But just as important is the idea of fostering family interaction. There are many studies now being published in the pediatric literature about the significance of family activities whether that be eating together reading together etc. I won’t go into the details here. Don’t get me wrong I love reading on a device(my blackberry) but I don’t see it replacing physical books for children. Another point– there is plenty in the medical literature about the negative impact of screen time on young children. the emphasis has been on computers TV DVD etc. Might not reading on an ereader fall into the same category? Just a thought to chew on.
With respect and regreting that I am so negative, I would respectfully submit that this idea that children need to learn to read from paper books and not eReaders is all a complete bunch of hooey !
Based on what evidence ? Just personal opinion ? We have seen how bizarre personal opinion can be in a series of articles here by adult book lovers who appear unable to grasp the difference between medium and content. I fear the same clearly applies here.
Oh please. A child will interact with an eReader or iPad just as effectively as a paper book and the suggestion that a child needs to ‘turn the page themselves’ as part of the learning process beggars belief. This is clearly a mental block on the art of the writer, who is clearly emotionally limited to the concept of paper book, and it has nothing to do with the real act of learning by a child.
I could go on and on, quote by quote but it would be boring. Will children still interact with other media such as block, toys, counting units et al ? of course they will ! but that is not the issue being claimed. The story about puppetry is also a complete red herring and an irrelevance thrown in to confuse and instead it actually illustrates confusion on the part of the writer. Children will always benefit from a multitude of learning experiences in class that go beyond the book, either paper or eBook.
All recent research on learning through use of computers has consistently shown huge accelerated learning by children of all abilities. For anyone who has used ereaders and allowed their children to play with them it is evident that they grasp the principle in nano seconds and without real hard evidence to the contrary, I don’t buy into Joanna’s assertion one bit.
I am confused by Elihu’s comment because I see nothing relevant to the eReader issue in the comment. I see absolutely no difference between reading aloud to a child on an eReader and doing it with a paper book. Children, like my own, love to be read aloud to as the spring board for the whole learning to read process. As for evidence regarding time reading e-paper, I would love to see references to the research.
As I said in my reply to you on Mobile Read (and in previous articles for this site) this is not coming from a place of just ‘opinion.’ I am qualified professionally in this area (and have extra qualifications in teaching languages). It has nothing to do with sentiment or emotion or being pro-paper or anti-paper. Different tools for different tasks is the issue. Reading aloud to a child is different from teaching a child to read for themselves. With the former, an ebook reader can be one tool of many. With the latter, they really do need the tactile aspect, in the same way that calculators have not replaced math manipulatives for the small child learning basic numeracy.
You are entitled to your opinion and to the realisation that that is all it is, as is mine.
Onward 🙂
Interesting article! I had not thought about eBooks and child development. I’ll keep watching as Joanna and Howard swap research.
Two colleagues, Dr. Derek Cabrera and Dr. Laura Colosi, recently wrote an article in Scientific American Mind about how important touch is for learning. This is a HUGE area of research with big downstream implications on parenting, child psychology, and early childhood education. Their article does not tackle eBooks, but there’s no doubt that tactile learning is critically important.
Check out the Scientific American Mind article: http://tinyurl.com/2awved8