Do Children's E-Books Ruin Reading? 149
An anonymous reader writes "A fierce argument has begun over whether children are actually 'reading' new e-books or simply 'watching' them. As publishers pump increasing levels of interactivity into e-books, the New York Times and others argue that these highly-interactive, popular titles are ruining the purpose of reading. The NYT also worries that new e-book titles could distract kids from the tougher task of actually concentrating on literature: '[W]hat will become of the readers we've been: quiet, thoughtful, patient, abstracted, in a world where interactive can be too tempting to ignore?' Others, like Gizmodo, defend these new e-books, pointing at titles like Alice for the iPad, of which they blabber, 'For the first time in my life, I'm blown away by an interactive book design.' But, the NYT counters, 'What I really love [about traditional books] is their inertness. No matter how I shake Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, mushrooms don't tumble out of the upper margin, unlike the Alice for the iPad.'"
Non-issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Interactive books have been around for decades - books with sliding tabs, sound effects when you press little buttons - those kinds of things. So I don't think e-books along the lines of that Alice one are a problem at all
What we should be concerned about is interactivity replacing the text rather than augmenting it. That's when it's a problem
The equation of truth (Score:5, Funny)
Don't we all know this from episode I?
Re:The equation of truth (Score:5, Insightful)
Children + new technology = loss of childhood dreams
That's an interesting point.
Consider this, when you see an image of a character, you're seeing what someone else's imagination came up with on how it looks. For example, how many of you see a movie adaptation of a book only to have them cast an actor that looks nothing like you imagined it?
With picture books or multimedia or whatever, the authors are replacing the child's imagination with their own. The child may have something better or something they like more or...I don't know.
I think the picture books or any multimedia system is replacing a child's imagination - it's not active.
That's why books to movies usually suck: our imaginations are usually better than what Hollywood can come up with - Starship Troopers for one.
I'm not creative enough on how to explain it further.
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Re:The equation of truth (Score:4, Insightful)
Paul Verhoeven said "We always called action movies fascist, so we thought it would be interesting to make a real fascist movie" and that "the point of this movie is that war makes fascists of us all". He said he read part of the book but hated it. Still the society in the movie has the same rules as the society in the book. The fact that he portays that society as fascist means the movie is a satire of the book, and also of the American idea that war can be won without a moral cost for the victors. This last one is a key thing to Verhoeven - films like Black Book show how corrupting war can be, even for the most morally justified side.
Of course if you have a sense of humour and an ability to see the flaws in plans for utopian society whilst still being able to appreciate the good ideas you can enjoy both. Like Marx Heinlein gets in some good jabs at democratic societies, and like Marx the alternative he suggests would be a nightmare if implemented.
Still it's interesting that people that believe in Heinlein's blueprint for a society seem to always be viscerally hostile to the movie that satirizes them. That makes me think the movie's point that the society described in the book is fascist has some truth to it. It seems very unlikely that the society that Heinlein describes would allow a movie like Starship Troopers to be made.
Actually Starship Troopers the movie seems scarily prescient of the War On Terror.
"Some say that western incursions into the Middle East have provoked the muslims and a live and let live policy would be preferrable"
"I'M FROM NEW YORK AND I SAY KILL 'EM ALL!"
Of course, luckily we lived in a good old fashioned democracy with universal suffrage. And democracies are quite happy with films that poke fun at them.
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"Like Marx Heinlein gets in some good jabs at democratic societies, and like Marx the alternative he suggests would be a nightmare if implemented."
Alright - first, allow me to point out that Heinlein's world in Starship Troopers represents a relatively stable world, AFTER they emerge from the real nighmare of anarchy.
But, that wasn't your point, nor is it mine.
I question whether that "nightmare" of Heinlein's world is any worse than what we have today. I mean, look at the United States. Unemployment is ov
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If you served in the US military, you swore an oath to uphold the US Constitution. Using force to disenfranchise non veterans - and that is the only way to do it - is not doing that.
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The US constitution? In Heinlein's world, the constitution doesn't exist. I'm moving, because I like the laws in his world better.
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Well you said you'd served in the US Military. In which you case you swore an oath to uphold the US Constitution. Also using force to overthrow the US constitution is treason if you are a US citizen.
E.g.
From the book
With national governments in collapse at the end of the XXth century, something had to fill the vacuum, and in many cases it was the returned veterans. They had lost a war, most of them had no jobs, many were sore as could be over the terms of the Treaty of New Delhi, especially the P.O.W. foul-up - and they knew how to fight. But it wasn't revolution; it was more like what happened in Russia in 1917 - the system collapsed; somebody else moved in. The first known case, in Aberdeen, Scotland, was typical. Some veterans got together as vigilantes to stop rioting and looting, hanged a few people (including two veterans) and decided not to let anyone but veterans on their committee. Just arbitrary at first - they trusted each other a bit, they didn't trust anyone else. What started as an emergency measure became constitutional practice in a generation or two.
"They knew how to fight" implies that they used force to set up their system. Also if this happened in the US they have clearly abrogated the constitution they swore to defend. They have committed treason.
Ironically enough what happened in Russia in 1917 was not that "the system collapsed and so
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It seems that more people get welfare in various forms than actually work in this country
That's a bit like saying "more people eat vegetables of various types than actually eat meat in this country"
That is to say, it's horseshit for more than a handful of reasons, and one doesn't even exclude the other to begin with (nor does each "form" exclude other forms, and percentages don't work like that)
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Like Medicaid. That's "welfare" according to most people, because if you can't afford to see a doctor then you're the scum of the earth and [i]deserve[/i] to be sick. Other forms of welfare I'm less leniant with, but come on! This discussion makes me sick. The grandparent poster sounds to me like someone who disguises "I deserve more" into "They deserve less." People are pissed off about their own financial problems love to take it out on poor people. Poor people know something about financial problem
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"In our world, here and now, there are any number of people who have more rights than I have, and my service to my country means just about squat."
Are you going to actually substantiate your outrage or are you going to give us the outrage? This is sounding like an OReilly rant more than anything else.
So, first, who has more rights than you do? And are you suggesting that your service to your country gives you more rights? What service? Military? I respect military men, but they don't get more rights th
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In October 2009, 70.1 percent of 2009 high school graduates were enrolled in colleges or universities, a historical high.
ttp://www.bls.gov/
You should try reading more than science fiction. One state (Arizona) is paralyzed by moronic and unjust laws that the whole USA is freaking out over. If the united states government would have invested all your money into your country's natural disasters and tech and jobs instead of shooting Arabs in some dusty asshole of
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Did you click the link? shadowstats.com
Unemployment is over 20%. Using the very same facts, figures, and formulas that were used for a couple of decades before Bill Clinton took office, the unemployment stands around 22%, right now.
First, Bill Clinton changed the formuals, then George Bush changed the formulas again. That 9.9% figure that you are quoting? Lies. Nothing but lies. And, if "official" unemployment figure goes over 10% again, the government will jiggle the formulas again. Care to take a b
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You don't have to subscribe to shadowstats to read the information, or the explanations. Go. Read. Don't be an ass. Unemployment during the depression was much greater than 20%. And, in case you hadn't noticed, we were precipitously close to a real depression only a year ago.
Once again - the federal government has changed the method for determining unemployment rates twice in the past two decades, to hide the real unemployment rates. Don't believe me? Google around. You're to smart, or to good, or t
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I'm the moron - but you're unwilling to read and learn. Got it.
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Yes, waging a genocidal war where billions die on behalf of a military dictatorship and which will likely end with the extinction of at least one intelligent species is far worse than having 20% unemployment rate, social welfare, and even *gasp* illegal immigrants. Any other dumb questions?
Dunno about the prison thing, thought.
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The US population is about 300 million, 1 in 10 of 300 million is 30 million. There's no way that 30 million people are in jail in the US. There's about 2 million, which is still huge but nowhere near 30 million.
Now if you arbitrarily decide to talk only about adult males (why, don't women go to jail?), probably ignore foreign visitors and illegal aliens, then you can start with about 100 million in the population, so 1/10 means only about 10 million people, which is c
Marx ... (Score:2)
As far as I know Marx never advocated a "Marxist" state and his contemporary Bakunin predicted many of the problems encountered later by the 20th century disasters.
Anyway I'm a lot more interested in Lennon.
Weird thing about Starship Troopers - in the movie the humans seem to be the bad guys. It's a distopian take on Heinlein's trains-running-on-time. Forever War by Haldeman was a response to the Heinlein.
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It wasn't satire. The Nazis had that for children, it was called the Hitler Jugend [wikipedia.org]. I suspect that was the initial source.
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For example, how many of you see a movie adaptation of a book only to have them cast an actor that looks nothing like you imagined it?
Like I imagined it? Never mind that. Let's complain about casting someone who is nothing like the author imagined. E.g.:
Hermione_Granger [wikipedia.org] vs. Emma Watson [wikipedia.org].
It's been a very long while since I read the first Harry Potter book, but I had the distinct impression that Rowling thought of Hermione as very ordinary-looking, perhaps even a bit ugly, at least here-and-there.
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Hermione Granger is a Author Avatar [tvtropes.org]. So it's quite OK for her to be as attractive as JK Rowling is rather than as attractive as JK Rowling thinks she is.
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Of course, by the exact same logic, a book is replacing stories and characters the child comes up himself with something the author came up with.
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Considering the example given in the summary is Alice in Wonderland, your comment, while true to a certain extent, is also rather ironic: Alice herself made it quite clear that she'd prefer books to have pictures if at all possible.
I took a look at the video link in the summary and I have to say one thing: It's way over-hyped. I mean, come on - the person doing the video did everything possible to make the various little doodads respond, and so violently that I would think any reasonably healthy person w
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Please ignore the "violently" remark above, I accidentally hit the submit button before I was finished. That should probably read "aggressively" or something a little less severe.
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Re:Non-issue (Score:4, Insightful)
I think, like TV, it's all about how the interactive books are used. If the interactive books are used primarily as a babysitter that's a problem.
However, if the parent is interacting with their child while their child is interacting with the book, it's not really a problem. There's much more going on from a learning standpoint than just learning the words when a parent and a child read together. The social interaction is the important part.
But... if the 'interactive book' is constantly used as a way for the parents to not have to interact with their child, it will breed the same bunch of moronic mouthbreathers as children who were brought up in front of the TV with little interaction from their parents. (Ok... that's a bit strong, but you know what I mean!) ;-)
It seems to me that people often forget there's more to education than just memorizing facts and figures. The social aspect is equally important.
Re:Non-issue (Score:5, Funny)
Books for wizard kids (Harry Potter) have things that speak and move for themselves and the kids seem to do just fine.
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I want Textadventures! (Score:4, Insightful)
Why are there no textadventures/"choose your own adventure"-books for the kindle or any other ereader?
Also, these interactive kiddie books might lead to the kindle 3 being like this: http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1910868 [collegehumor.com]
Re:I want Textadventures! (Score:5, Informative)
There are. http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_86283691_14?ie=UTF8&docId=1000449691&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-11&pf_rd_r=0RZ8W5BAKW1XS4XQ4DD3&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1260058202&pf_rd_i=1268190011 [amazon.com]
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How well do those work? Do they automatically keep track of what items you carry and all that stuff?
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You'll have to make your own maps, but the game keeps track of your inventory and stats.
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Now, wait a second. Those old CYOA books were about the cheesiest ripoffs that I can remember from my teen years. I don't think I ever picked one up that was really worth a dollar. What, ten, fifteen minutes amusement? If you start over, you get another five minutes. And, Amazon wants 5 bucks and more? For the ELECTRONIC version? Phhht.
Who said, "There's a sucker born every minute"?
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Eh? (Score:3, Informative)
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Any child should intuitively turn the illustrations off, or simply ignore them if they are distracting.
You obviously don't hang out with young children much.
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While I agree that the submitter was being a bit romantic in his depiction of the reader, you shouldn't dismiss his ideas simply because of it. One of my favorite elements of reading static text without any added illustrations is you get to use your imagination to fill in the blanks! TV basically just hands you all of the artwork and scenery but when you read, all you get is the jist from the author and it's up to you to weave those descriptions together with your imagination into something.
Adding all of
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There's alw
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I can only speak for myself, but if you want to read a text, you read it? Any child should intuitively turn the illustrations off, or simply ignore them if they are distracting.
While I'd like to agree with you (because personally I do "turn the illustrations off" for myself as well), it doesn't work that way for a lot of (most?) adults, let alone distractable children.
To take an even more subtle example, I have a lot of academic friends who hate footnotes, particularly those that provide more than a reference. Why? Because they are -- supposedly -- distracting. I would think by the time that a person had achieved a doctorate in the humanities (for example), they'd have enough
My 3 month old... (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't consider myself a parent with any real life experience, being that I have only been one for 3 months, but I have some observations on how my son interacts with certain physical items in his new world:
1. He is not permitted to watch TV.
2. We read books to him a lot.
3. He listens to a lot of music tailored towards children (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIueuNdB2oM)
While he has some attention for books, especially ones where my mother recorded herself reading them and we play it for him while he listens, he has an amazing attention span for my iPhone or the TV. He will go out of his way to crane his neck around to look at the TV if it happens to be on (we don't watch much TV) or physically move himself to look at the TV if he is in a device which allows for him to do that.
I'm guessing that either he's fucking weird (certainly possible considering his parents) or all children love to watch shit. While he gets excited when I come home from work, it's nothing like he gets when he's watching my parents on Google Video Chat. If he's going to feel excited via a particular medium then I say I'm all for it--especially if it helps one particular child learn better than others.
Re:My 3 month old... (Score:5, Insightful)
He's three months old.
Of course the TV's interesting, it's making full of sounds, colours and moving stuff.
Just buy (or make) him a Hanging Mobile.
Get a foreign language channel with cartoons... (Score:5, Interesting)
Get a foreign language channel with cartoons. Or two. Or three. Languages, that is. Probably at least as many channels as well.
My cousin was speaking English almost as good as her native language (Bosnian/Serbian) by the time she was 5-6 years old from all the Cartoon Network she watched.
Basically, she was speaking a foreign language before she learned to read or write.
She is now studying to be a professor of English.
Also, when your kid starts to read, don't shun the comics in favor of books.
If possible, get him some comics in the foreign language he is picking up from the cartoons.
Amazon has international sites, holding books in the local language. But there are also online communities that scan comics. Even those in "foreign" languages.
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All good advice.
Cartoons and comics are designed for kids: simplify the unimportant, expose the cool ideas. They are going to be learning more from a Japanese or Spanish cartoon than from their father reading them a "good" book. My bi-lingual 5 year old still asks to watch Hikaru No Go at times.
Hell, my oldest kid taught herself to read in a few months from Calvin & Hobbes: once she wanted to know what the joke was, she went from "reading is hard" to "reading is easy" is about 5 hours.
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I can vouch for this. I learned to read english from american video game magazines in the 90's.
I think it worked, except now when I speak I use too many words like "Cowabunga!" and "Rad!"
Sorry 'bout that... (Score:2, Flamebait)
I picked up most of my English grammar from your mom.
Makes sense that yours is better. After all, you get to do it with her all the time, right?
I mean all the fucking, not the English grammar. That comes after the fucking.
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He's not weird. Or no weirder than normal.
He likes to look at things, check. He's still learning to see, s
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You make it sound almost sinister.
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Attention to Television at this age is a reflex. One that trains his brain to expect more activity than he will encounter in mundane, real life. Don't feed him that much activity unless you want a brain that needs a complete change of scenery every ~1 second to keep an attention span.
When I was younger, it would be normal for a person to talk to another person on the television for four or five seconds. Now you don't get to see four or five seconds of anything in one continuous shot. It is like the film
Ruining the purpose of reading? ABSOLUTELY! (Score:4, Insightful)
Same way picture books [wikipedia.org] have been ruining reading these last couple of centuries.
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And lets not forget the Gutenberg Bible [cornell.edu], with all those fluffy birds and decorations, who's supposed to concentrate on reading the text?
If one day all books come in highly interactive forms and every child has an iPad, I might start to worry, but at the moment almost no child has an iPad and fully interactive books are a rarity compared to normal books.
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And lets not forget the Gutenberg Bible [cornell.edu], with all those fluffy birds and decorations, who's supposed to concentrate on reading the text?
Literacy was declining long before moveable type. How can you expect people to concentrate on their prayers when they get distracted by flashy illuminations http://www.christusrex.org/www2/berry/ [christusrex.org] some of them quite lurid http://www.christusrex.org/www2/berry/DB-f25v-d2l.jpg [christusrex.org] ?
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Re:Ruining the purpose of reading? ABSOLUTELY! (Score:5, Funny)
Tell me about it. Some people don't even know what paragraphs are anymore.
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If that was a pun at my post then you should know that this site formatted it that way. It was full of paragraphs when I typed it out.
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Should have selected Plain Old Text rather than HTML.
You can set your default text layout in your preferences.
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I'm all for picturebooks, popupbooks, e-readers, but in the particular Alice book it's really annoying that things move in the background even if I don't want them to. It's a cheap gimmick without function. (However the artwork is really nice.)
Etude & Cat In The Hat (Score:4, Interesting)
I see it similar to the Etude music player on the iPhone. It's a MIDI player that highlights the notes on the sheet music and on a simulation of a piano keyboard as the music is being played.
The Cat in the Hat eBook has several modes, one of which highlights the text as a voice reads the words. Another of which lets the kid touch something in the drawing, says the word and highlights it in the text (if it's in the passage on that page).
Neither replaces an audio performance (like an iTunes song or an audio book), and neither of which replace the physical static medium (like a piece of sheet music or a book), but both make a nice interactive presentation to help the viewer's brain make the connection of these very different sensations.
They're just a tool. (Score:5, Insightful)
Tools can be used badly. That's nothing new either. You can use a TV to watch amazing documentaries, or crappy reality TV and "talk" shows like Jerry Springer. Kids can use it to watch garbage, or educational programming.
Interactive books are no different. They can be inert. They can distract from reading, or they can aid the reading process. There are fundamental differences between paper books and ebooks but blaming the format for poor execution is just weak. Since they can be more complex it becomes harder to differentiate, but that's what you have to do as a consumer....and there's nothing like word of mouth in mothers groups and in the school yard to help in that area.
Video games (Score:4, Insightful)
A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (Score:3, Interesting)
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Diamond age (Score:3, Interesting)
The Primer also reacts to its owners' environment and teaches them what they need to know to survive and grow
some more info on his ideas about "mediatrons" as he calls them: http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=214 [technovelgy.com]
e-ink, e-paper, ipad, not only technology changes, but the way people are educated too. now that they will have interactive textbooks, studying is not only going to be faster, but even more fun. anything from physics, chemistry, biology is going to be not only described, but shown. encarta of size of your palm. fantastic.
indeed, I think some books will be better off left as they are now. the main reason behind this is imagination and fantasy of reader. if you are shown everything, then there is barely some space for you imagination to fire up. it might be fun to roll and twist your ipad, but it might be even funnier to have all those characters shaped up by your imagination instead of imagination of the artist who worked on it. but this applies to less extent than the former case with textbooks. i guess it's great technology to have in overall.
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I think that what's easiest and most fun isn't what children should have. Imagining things that aren't in front of them is a critical skill, as are reading and understanding a description without an accompanying pictures.
For an analogy, it's easier to smoke pot for a b
Only a matter of time (Score:2, Funny)
Next thing you know, they'll start making movies out of these books. Gasp!
Seriously (Score:3, Insightful)
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Teal Deer!
Oblig. PennyArcade reference (Score:2)
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/10/26/ [penny-arcade.com]
What did we do before we had reading? (Score:2, Insightful)
Before humans invented written text, we learned by watching and listening. That's what we are programmed to do - watch and listen. Hell, how do we learn to speak? We listen to other people do it, and watch their lips move, and then mimic that as we listen to ourselves try to reproduce those sounds.
In many respects, interactive audio/visual methods are a more natural way for humans to learn than reading text.
A bit premature no? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or do enough kids have iPads now to make this a real concern? (who the hell buys their still learning to read kid an iPad anyway?)
Based on my own experience, I'd say that audio books (and of course TV) are more of a problem. My daughter has been surrounded by books and read to for her entire 8 years yet she is falling behind in reading. (though she's ahead in comprehension or vocabulary/) She'd prefer to listen to a book than read it herself and we've, regrettably, made this too easy for her to do. Much like TV (which she doesn't watch much of at home.... only on weekends and never live TV with commercials), I now find myself in the position of having to limit her intake of audio books from the library in a bid to motivate her to actually read for herself. I would think that interactive books, as long as they don't read the entire text, are an improvement over the totally passive experience of listening/watching.
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My daughter has been surrounded by books and read to for her entire 8 years yet she is falling behind in reading. (though she's ahead in comprehension or vocabulary)
Keep at it - my now 4th grader didn't start getting really into reading until 2nd or 3rd grade and now she's voracious - I never thought I'd have to bug her to stop reading! Our 2nd grader hasn't hit that point yet, but she's getting there; I still read to both of them most nights, we go to the library regularly, and I'm sure she'll do just fine. All kids are different, and I wouldn't be surprised if the younger one reads less just because of her personality, but that's ok. One thing that helped with our ol
I thought reading was about developing imagination (Score:4, Interesting)
Call me old fashioned but one of the reasons I have always enjoyed reading traditional books is because the author only drops the hints at what the world in the book looks like but I actually paint the complete picture. This is the same reason why most movies based on books don't do well, because it is extremely difficult to compete with what we imagined that world to be in the detail and besides the imaginary world is individual to each reader. No two worlds probably look the same.
Unfortunately, the more we get into the interactive books which try to replace the written word with pictures (or even the ones which try to augment it), the more would we be limiting our imagination and seeing it from someone else's eyes, which almost certainly would result in less "different" people in the world. Most of us on slashdot are evolutionists and we do appreciate that it is this difference which results in our species evolving. Hell, it could be that Da Vinci etc. probably started looking at flying because they had heard or read fairy tales where humans flew, which then one day was realised by incremental advance in science. So in some ways, we would be limiting our potential by relying more on the visual medium rather than imagining the world.
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Big surprise. (Score:5, Interesting)
At least they're reading something (Score:3, Insightful)
Who said anything about reading? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want a kid to read, you'll have to figure out the Dr.Suess first
Or just get the deluxe ebooks that are like popping "Shreck II" DVD on the nursery color TV. The nanny cam can read the smelly midget an ebook. After that, reading won't matter as much anymore. .
The Usual (Score:2)
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Well said. Even if books completely vanished next year, there are still tons of ways for children to utilize their imaginations. I also doubt it would lead to illiteracy, because reading is used for more than books.
Most complainers don't know the bookstore/library (Score:2)
The only problem would be a lack of fidelity, i.e. shitty gray screens, or a like of diversity, i.e. not having access to the whole bookstore or library.
Alice for iPad is a step in the right direction. Books for kids that age are mostly picture books.
And iPad itself can represent the full-fidelity of all of the paper books. And electronic books can also enable kids to get access to more books. Not just kids in rich countries.
We spend too much time talking about this shit and not enough time building. Kudos
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I saw the demo of the Alice book for iPad, and I think it's very annoying that things move/start to vibrate/fall off when you hold it in a slightly different angle. If I wanted to read it, I surely would turn off the interactive features. Of course it doesn't mean that all interactivity is necessarily bad.
Parenting crap again (Score:3, Insightful)
It's always the same "This is slowly killing my child / making them stupid, I want it banned." or something along those lines... just stop your kids doing it. Especially, in this case, because it would be reliant on an enormously expensive piece of hardware in order to operate - they are not going to be sneaking into the bookshops on the way home and picking up an eBook reader illicitly to stop you knowing. If you have doubts about it, stop them doing it and do, I don't know, parent-y things like... erm... encouraging them to read books, praising them when they learn a new word, switching OFF the TV when they've had too much (and no, TV itself isn't bad - don't bring up children who when they hit adulthood are *DYING* to watch TV to see what all their friends are talking about - banning TV outright is just delaying their inevitable obsession with the "forbidden") and saying No to them.
My child is 18 months. She *does* get transfixed to the television when her favourite program is on. That's why she gets a few hours a week and that's that. Then we switch it off and she doesn't burst into tears because she's not addicted to it. If you have a long car journey, you take two or three books with you - she will spend the *entire* trip engrossed in them, looking at every page, pointing out all the objects that she knows, learning the words for the ones she doesn't and she won't feel "deprived" or "bored" just because she only has books. When she learns to read, though, a habit of deliberately *choosing* a book to take out on a trip with her (as she currently does) will make the transition all that much easier.
Reading, picture books, comics, TV, radio, interactive software, things scrawled in crayon on the back of scrap paper, they are all just media. If you use them correctly, and proportionally, they all have a role to play in a child's development. If you don't, and just let the kid have completely free choice, of course they will ALWAYS choose the thing that's least effort - TV or some book that "reads to them" so they don't have to do this complicated pattern-recognition thing that dad wants them to do. That's fine occasionally and, yes, occasionally you do have to let them just be kids and have a day off of making them all the "horrible" stuff like learning to read, or tidying their room and so those times they can do things like interactive books and software or just veg out in front of the TV (we all do it, in moderation for the majority of us, so we can't be martyrs here and claim to be perfect and always do everything that we would want our children to see us do).
Let them have a life, and stop bloody micro-managing their exposure to the world. So long as they are doing the stuff you want them to do elsewhere, let them have their time off. To a child, learning to read is hard work on an enormously difficult but boring task, so after they've had a few hours of doing that give them some time off with whatever they want to do that's not hurting anyone else - video games (the age for violent ones is up to the individual parents, but you will not *turn* them into mass-murderers once they have acquired a sense of right and wrong), building Lego castles, scribbling on bits of paper, making a frame for the TV with tinsel and glue (with your permission), stamping on ants in the garden, whatever, it doesn't really matter. That's their time off, the same way that even university students, or 80-hour-week workers have time off. Just make sure that if you're worried they aren't reading enough, that you give them that TOO, at some other time, and by *your* rules.
I say yes.... (Score:2)
My cousin has one of those Leapfrog Tag [leapfrog.com] books. These are the ones in which you have a "pen" which can touch various objects on the pages and produce a sound. It's most often demonstrated as having the "pen" read the words that the child touches. However, the child can often touch animals, cars, trains etc etc and have the corresponding sounds. Out of two children, I have never seen them use the book the way that it is intended, they just touch the pictures repeatedly for the sounds. If I want them to r
Ideas On Raising Children (Score:2)
Every adult (including parents and non-parents) seems to have lots of opinions on how best to raise children.
Here are mine:
1) Love them
a) Do not harm them
2) Protect them
Everything else is open to interpretation. If you are a parent, teacher, or someone else who has regular contact with children, follow those guidelines and the kids will will mostly be fine (you can't protect them from every danger, nor should you try) - and remember at some point they start making their own choices.
On the subject o
Translation (Score:4, Informative)
Translation: "It's new and different, and I'm frightened by it."
No surprise (Score:2)
Bring Back Living Books for the iPad! (Score:2)
Time to resurrect Living Books [wikipedia.org] for the iPad. Little tykes would be enthralled by a touch version of Just Grandma and Me [amazon.com] - and learn to read, too!
ADHD (Score:2)
I think this book will do well with the young masses of the ADHD persuasion.
It's like complaining about pop-up books! (Score:1)
Having downloaded Alice for the iPad, it looks more like the app has revitalised Lewis Carroll's work, and made it fresh and interesting for a new audience -- It's certainly a more sensitive and respectful adaptation than the Tim Burton movie.
Obviously there needs to be a balance between text and images, but I can see parents reading this Alice app to their kids, with the physics-simulations being an attractive bonus to keep them entertaine
Aristotle hated books (Score:1)
Same old same old. Just recently, folks said the web was going to be the end of reading and writing even tho the 'billions of web pages" were all written by people and read by others. They don't spend any time thinking, they just likie to complain, kind of like a Tea Partier drinking the Mad Hatter's koolaid.
The medium dictates the art (Score:2)
Years ago I took a course from Dr. Thorburg at MIT, the central thesis of which was that each medium has its limitations. You can criticize the artist, but you can't say that a painter is no good because his painting are not three dimensional. You can't say that television is no good just because it appears in a small window and programs are usually limited to an hour or so.
TV is not stage, sculpture is not painting, etc. In this case, interactive ebooks will be created within the limitations of the ebook f
What happened to reading? (Score:2, Funny)
I don't get this book hysteria... (Score:2)
Repeat after me:
TV BAD
BOOK GOOD
COMPUTER BAD
EBOOK BAD
Anyone else notice a problem here? Judging an entire tool with a simplistic value judgment. A book involves learning to read necessarily, while an ebook, computer, or tv are more versatile tools. Sure you can watch trashy TV or play video games (at least a trashy novel is still helping hone reading skills), but you can also watch documentaries or shows that actually involve thinking. A good deal of the non-work time I'm on a computer is reading various new
photons (Score:1)
So different equals bad? (Score:2)
I'm sure that when books where invented there was somebody that complained that they would ruin the amazing oral narrative tradition. That people wouldn't be able to remember any longer the tens of thousands of verses that anybody could at the time, and that inventive would disappear in a world of fossilized stories. And they were probably even right. So what? Things change, get used to it.
There is nothing particularly special in books, that will make people grow up really sound-minded. It's not like if tod
Re: (Score:1)