Do Children's E-Books Ruin Reading? 149
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by
timothy
from the different-nodes-in-the-brain dept.
from the different-nodes-in-the-brain dept.
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
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]
Ruining the purpose of reading? ABSOLUTELY! (Score:4, Insightful)
Same way picture books [wikipedia.org] have been ruining reading these last couple of centuries.
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.
Re:Ruining the purpose of reading? ABSOLUTELY! (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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.
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.
Video games (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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.
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. .
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.
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.
Re:My 3 month old... (Score:3, Insightful)
He's not weird. Or no weirder than normal.
He likes to look at things, check. He's still learning to see, so any NEW thing will be interesting to him.
He's more interested in watching your parents on GVC, check. You're one of the two most important things in his universe. But you're old news compared to this little picture that talks and looks like Granma and Grampa. Though frankly he'd be just as interested in total strangers - he's after NEW.
The only problem with TV will come when you decide to use it as a babysitter. At that point, it becomes bad. Until then, it's just more novelty for the wee lad.
He's too young for books, other than as more NEW stuff.
That said, mother reading to him is better than mother recording things for him to listen to later.
Starting in about two years, you'll have your chance to start him on a lifetime of reading. There's pretty much one simple way to do that - read. Not necessarily to him, though that certainly helps. But if he sees you and his mother sitting down to an evening of reading most every night, he'll want to do it too. And once he starts, he'll never stop....
Re:The equation of truth (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The equation of truth (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
Re:The equation of truth (Score:3, Insightful)
"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 than I do. Sorry. I have a thing.
Re:The equation of truth (Score:2, Insightful)
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 a desert you would be fine. USA needs less military assholes not more. And the reason service to your country is currently meaningless its because the war in IRAQ is meaningless. USA is currently less safe then before 911. Due to the thousands upon thousands of enemies made in the war. Now the enemies of the USA have a vendetta of blood from actual experience not just some religious fanatic fanning the flames of discontent. Can't we just have a beer and get along!?! Oh wait no booze allowed to the Muslims! I guess That's why they are so pissed off!
Re:The equation of truth (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:The equation of truth (Score:3, Insightful)
The US constitution? In Heinlein's world, the constitution doesn't exist. I'm moving, because I like the laws in his world better.