e-reading – EDUC 342: Child Development & New Technologies

Week 3

myupa — Thu, 21 Jan 2016 08:00:06 +0000

In Putting Education in “Educational Apps: Lessons From the Science of Learning,” I was intrigued by the tension arising from the affordances of educational technology (in this case tablets and mobile devices). That is, when technology is being used in an educational context, there is a fine line between engaging technologies that enhance learning and technologies with too many bells and whistles that detract from learning. Miller & Warschauer state that, “technology mixed well with young children’s literacy, particularly when play was involved,” while Hirsch-Pasek et al state “‘bells and whistles’ embedded in an e-book often distracted 3-year olds from understanding and remembering the story.'” Moreover, since parents play such an important role in helping children develop early literacy, I’m wondering if the simplest form of text, books, are best at home or in the earliest stages of learning how to read. On the other hand, are there other affordances of technology that can enhance these interactions?

Week 3

sandhini — Thu, 21 Jan 2016 06:41:30 +0000

I found the readings for this week really interesting. I felt that the rubric for measuring an app presented in the Hirsch-Patek et al. paper was particularly interesting.
I thought that the pillars of science of learning and the way they could translate to apps were particularly interesting and helped provide some insight into how to go about app development.
Also, while I did like the attempt to quantify and visually portray something like app effectiveness, I thought that it was slightly limiting and that something like ‘engagement’ is highly subjective.
Additionally it is evident that some apps are fun and educative whereas some are only fun. I feel that a more interesting question to tackle is how to design fun and educative apps that are more appealing than only fun apps. This problem is evidenced by the fact that Toca Boca Hair Salon is a far far far more popular app than Alien Assignment (which has only around 100,000 downloads).
The E-Reading paper was fascinating too. I found the portion that mentioned that E-reading can be used to encourage reading amongst reluctant readers to be really insightful.
Two questions that I have are how something as abstract as engagement can be measured and how do we account for variations amongst different children.

Social interaction in e-reading

mjiang2 — Thu, 21 Jan 2016 04:53:09 +0000

Based on the study of Hirsh-Pasek et al., social interaction in apps includes face-to-face interaction in the same physical space, communication through technologies in virtual space, and parasocial relations with characters. It is interesting that in the e-reading space, little social interaction is involved. Research done by Miller mentioned some benefits of parents reading together with their children, but I was wondering how to best leverage technologies can facilitate parent-child interaction in the virtual space as well. For example, parents can, through parent account, keep track of where their children are reading and questions they propose, so that parents do not have to always be around to assist with their children’s reading experience. I’m not sure whether parasocial relation in e-reading is possible, but it makes me think of the importance of the content of e-books, since technologies focus too much on the format of the e-books. How might we empower storytellers to generate intriguing and educational content?

I think a lot can be done to improve social interaction in e-reading experience: ways to facilitate collaborative reading in the same physical space and online, and create great content and interaction that foster parasocial relations.