For Young Readers, Print or Digital Books? | MindShift - 1 views
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The implication? Parents and teachers should choose basic e-books like the Kindle or Nook over enhanced e-books, such as the iPad, if they want a more literacy-focused co-reading experience with children. Prompting kids with questions that relate to the text, labeling and naming objects, and encouraging kids to talk about the book’s content from their own perspective all elicit kids to be more verbal, and can lead to improved vocabulary and language development, the study states.
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But if “engagement” is the objective, the issue gets murkier. When it came time to measuring “child-book” engagement, based on the child’s direct attention and touch, more kids showed higher levels of engagement for the e-books than the print books, though a majority were equally engaged by both book types. Children also physically interacted with the enhanced e-book more than when reading either the print or basic e-book.
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On the other hand, when measuring “overall engagement” —a composite of parent-child interaction, child-book interaction, parent-book interaction, and signs of enjoyment — an interesting trend emerged: 63% of the parent-child pairs were as engaged reading the print book as they were when reading the e-book (both types); 6% of the pairs were more engaged with the e-book than the print book, compared to the 31% of pairs that were more engaged with the print book than the e-book.
