Learning To Read With Click and Jane 115
theodp writes "While earlier generations learned to Read with Dick and Jane, the NYT Magazine reports that today's tykes are getting their reading chops at online sites like Starfall (free) and One More Story (subscription). Quoting the Times Magazine: 'In their book "Freakonomics," Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt write that kids who grow up in houses packed with books fare better on school tests than those who grow up with fewer books.' So how will kids who learn to read online fare when they grow up?"
They learn to read online? (Score:1, Insightful)
Aye tink day will bee find.
internet speak? (Score:3, Insightful)
LOL WTF OMG
This will be how kids speak if they learn to read only with the internet.
then again, some people already do.
Re:internet speak? (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't forget that it's a big internet. If we're lucky the kids will find their way to Project Gutenberg.
I hate this tag, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
1. The kind of parents who own a lot of books are generally of above-average intelligence, and hence produce offspring that are as well.
2. The kind of parents who own a lot of books are likely to either read books to their children, encourage their children to read themselves.
The medium through with the information is conveyed likely matters very little, if at all, and so long as the children receive adequate instruction on how to access materials to read, and encouragement to actually do so, they will fare just fine.
Freakonomics (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not the books that cause the kids to do better. It's the fact that type types of parents who stock their houses with books are those who will produce better children. In other words, the books don't cause the good output, they simply reflect the environment that causes the good output. Thus whether one learns to read via books or computers isn't important; it's mainly what the parents do.
Incredibly well (Score:5, Insightful)
Children who grow up with the web should read incredibly well. The web is a massive library and without being able to read you won't be able to do much in internet and computer land. It solves a huge problem for parents and that problem is getting children interested in reading in the first place.
That said, a child growing up on the internet will be exposed to improper punctuation and grammar more frequently than a child growing up reading proofread and edited printed materials. That is probably a good thing. Those children will be less pedantic, and have less difficulty discerning intent and meaning from written text.
This is no different than the gamer generation versus their parents. The problem was not merely that the parents had difficulty with electronic interfaces, the problem was they had difficulty adapting to varied interfaces. The gamer generation can hope between operating systems, not to mention individual applications for the same purpose without too much difficulty. Their parents could learn and master an OS or application but when confronted with something different had/have a great deal of difficulty.
Why? Because every console video game has a unique and non-standard interface. Instead of learning the interfaces themselves, gamers learn the common elements that need to be and should be present in all video game interfaces. When they pick up a new game they don't stare at the foreign interface confused they start by figuring out how to navigate and then immediately proceed to look for the elements they know should be there and take note of extras found along the way.
That difference in how a new (insert almost anything here) is viewed while minor gives amazing flexibility when presented with tasks and arguably is the difference between genius and ignorance.
Please re-read 'Freakonomics' (Score:5, Insightful)
Corelation etc etc (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmm, that's a strange way to put it. Yes that statement is probably true, but it doesn't necessarily follow that if you pack any kid's house with books they would do better at school tests. I think it's more likely that parents who tend to read a lot, and therefore happen to have a lot of books in their house, also tend to place higher value on learning and knowledge in general and then pass on that inclination to their kids. It would be more useful to say that kids whose parents read a lot tend to do better on school tests than those whose parents read less.
Re:Kid that grow up with houses packed with books. (Score:5, Insightful)
Thing is, that if a family has a lot of books in their house, they are probably are reasonably wealthy. (In particular, not working class. In other words, people with money have kids that tend to do better in school.
Who modded this comment 'interesting'? more like troll...
Your comment is total BS. 2nd generation 'working class', we get by paycheck to paycheck, and that didn't keep us from acquiring a 4000+ volume library over the years - some from my own childhood.
It has entirely to do with interest in knowledge, not wealth. If you were raised with that, you'll wind up with books.
An interest in money doesn't correlate at all with knowledge - look around at the economy today. It took some finely focused stupidity to create this mess.
Books are NOT expensive. Compared to the plethora of other ways to waste 10-30 bucks, a book is an investment. A GOOD book is a gem.
Re:Kid that grow up with houses packed with books. (Score:5, Insightful)
Thing is, that if a family has a lot of books in their house, they are probably are reasonably wealthy. (In particular, not working class. In other words, people with money have kids that tend to do better in school.
While I think it's true that the children of the wealthy are more likely to get a better education, I don't think that's the main force at work here.
Reading a book is a very different experience than reading something online. It requires a greater commitment/attention span, and the reward in return is a greater understanding of the subject (for non-fiction) or immersion in the story (for fiction). This is assuming the books are good, of course.
I suspect that children who "learn to read online" are going to have an even worse attention span than I do (and mine is pretty terrible). I also suspect that they will have a much more superficial understanding of the things they've read, and that their comprehension of spelling and grammar will be abysmal.
Re:I hate this tag, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed, though I'd add:
3. Kids emulate their parents, so if the parents read a lot, the kids will tend too, as well.
My kids are 4 and 6, and I pretty much let them do whatever they want media-wise (no X rated, but otherwise, fine.) They mostly make choices we parents approve of.
Re:Not enough data (Score:4, Insightful)
More likely the opposite- if the parents own a lot of books, they likely care about their literacy and learning. That influences their children's opinions of both. And if they find learning important, they're more likely to help tech their kids and to take an active interest in their schooling. So its not likely the presence of book, but a root cause behind both of them.
Re:Kid that grow up with houses packed with books. (Score:5, Insightful)
Reading a book is a very different experience than reading something online. It requires a greater commitment/attention span, and the reward in return is a greater understanding of the subject (for non-fiction) or immersion in the story (for fiction). This is assuming the books are good, of course.
I read books online at both the Baen free library http://www.baen.com/library/ [baen.com] and Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/ [gutenberg.org]. Other than being able to click directly to the chapter I'm at, and to scroll instead of turn the page, I don't consider it a "very different" experience. Perhaps you meant that short-form reading -magazines, newspapers, pamphlets, cereal boxes- is a very different experience from long-form reading. And most web material tends toward essays, articles and short blurbs. There's nothing about the words being displayed as pixels rather than blobs of ink that makes for a different experience, at least for me. I understand that some people find it more difficult to focus on a screen for long periods compared to paper. But then again, some people find glossy laptop screens to be annoying as well.