Monday, January 24, 2011

E READERS FOR KIDS - LIKE WATCHING TV?

If you've been following my posts you may have guessed that I'm not a big fan of e-readers. I have my reasons. This is another reason why I think they're problematic:

B&N's Nook folk have designed applications for its reader and for the iPad: "Where the best children's stories come to life." Their re-design of classic books has made them "come to life" so much so that you may as well just pop in a DVD and forget the book entirely.

Here's an example:

GO, DOG, GO!, which is a beginning reader, starts out in a male voice--"There they go... Look at those dogs go!..."



And as the voice prattles on the screen zooms in on the image:



Hmmm. Where did the text go? As a beginning reader, I think the text probably needs to be present for the child to learn how to read. As is, the "book" presents itself more as a movie... or it tries its darndest to be one. It's too bad, isn't it? It's unfortunate that all books don't eradicate all of their words and just have omniscient voices that shout out from their speaker boxes and characters that animate themselves from behind the plastic screens for the children of America.

1) I had a hard time learning to read. This will take the pressure off other kids. Perhaps they won't get an eye twitch like I did.
2) We don't need more literacy, do we?

No comments:

Post a Comment