Do Interactive Book Apps Help or Harm Reading Skills?

[Sam Gliksman]

One of the fastest growing categories of iPad apps is the interactive children's book. From classics such as Miss Spider's Tea Party and Dr. Seuss to Disney's Toy Story, there are new book apps being released every day. Children interact with objects in the story, start and stop movie clips, solve puzzles, paint and more.

One body of opinion feels that anything that increases their enjoyment of stories is a positive development. Others think that interaction and play dilutes the reading experience and weakens their reading skills.

What do you think? Post your comments below.

 

[Susan Bestwick]

For a Kinesthetic learner being able to hear, see, and manipulate IS the only way that real learning can occur.  If you look at the activities that teachers use to increase reading comprehension, you will find that many of them are used by the interactive iBooks.  As an educator for many years, I learned that engagement is what leads students to the feeding trough of learning!

[Tina]

I totally agree!! Engagement encourages learning, boredom often results in a lack of knowledge.

[Jennifer Gibson]

I also think younger learners can follow the text and learn naturally (within context) about fluency, flow, and voice through these books!

[Elaine Doolittle]

When I was little, I had books with records. My daughter had books with cassettes. When I first started teaching, there were Living Books on CD's. I see these book apps as the next step in this progression. All were ways to read and the more children read, the better readers they will become. If it is also more fun to read, so much the better.

[peter dewaard]

love the discussion guys. being able to follow divergent thoughts while reading is probably how good readers interact with text anyway..... but one BIG advantage of being a good reader is that usually reading ability is related to focused thinking. Good readers are usually also able to concentrate for longer than non-readers. Flitting from one thing to anopthjer may impact on students' ability to think and focus for an extended time???? What do you think??

[Cammy Torgenrud]

Peter, your point about sustained + focused attention is the one I've been wondering about recently, but I haven't seen any data one way or another on this concept yet.

I know that I personally tend to jump around and "sample" when using Flip, Pulse and the more interactive Kno and Inkling textbook apps, but when I open up Kindle and read an actual book with just text on screen, I think I treat the reading experience much the same way I do with a paper or hardback. I suspect the former strengthens my ability to see connections and may improve my recall by virtue of being multi-sensory. The latter, though, may promote deeper reflection, a different kind of imaginative immersion - or is this just my inner "Shallows" bias coming through?

Whether my adult experience mirrors that of younger readers, I have no idea. Still, if there are different benefits from these varying modes of reading, I hope we encourage students to value both kinds of text. I guess I just want them as adults to be able to really, truly, deeply process the Constitution, for ex, without animation.

[Lisa Johnson]

This is such a great discussion. As a mom of two preschool boys and an iPad Evangelist, I found there were a few things I do prior to independent interactive book reading that help facilitate reading comprehension for my preschooler. I have found the initial time to introduce the book to my preschooler has proved to be invaluable in building his own fluency and reading comprehension skills and many of the topics and elements that we discuss are carried with him in future independent readings.

 

Thought I would share:

• point out difficult words or discuss the meaning of idioms

• highlight rhymes

• expand on elements of setting or plot and build connections (e.g. what do you think

  will happen next? have you ever been to a forest? do you remember when we

  went to the zoo?)

• strengthen inferencing skills (e.g. how do you think the character feels? why do

  you think he is upset?)?

• practice summarization and sequencing (e.g. what happened to the character?,

  what happened first/next/last?)

• foster discussion skills (e.g. what was your favorite part of the book? What was

  your favorite character and why?)