Quote:
Originally Posted by pilotbob
Kids like to touch gadgets and see them respond.... I think any toddler would love a touch color interactive ebook reader.
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Just to add a little kindling to this flamefest, my 18 month old daughter loves to play with ABC Animals on my iPhone while I hold it. She slides the cards side to side until she sees and/or hears something she recognizes after we go through it all once together. She's learning letters and basic animal words with a fairly high tech gadget.
Granted, I wouldn't trust her not to break an iPhone but a suitably durable device doing the same thing would be a killer app for young children in schools. Unfortunately the reality is that K-12 is horribly underfunded everywhere (in the USA at least) and they are lucky to have one 10 year old computer in many classrooms. My inlaws are both teachers. One teaches 3rd graders and they still use those ancient tape players with the shared headphones and follow-along books as though that was modern teaching technology.
It's sad. If I'm ever rich someday my one and only philanthropy will be outfitting classrooms with practical but modern learning technology. And I assure you I would not be so foolishly conservative to think that paper is what makes kids want to read. My little girl whom I mentioned before also likes her regular books, and does the same sort of pointing-and-saying games with them. She doesn't care whether it's on paper or a screen, though I do think the touching is important if only because she seems to think touching a word is integral to reading it as that is what we do when we read to her.
I guess it's important not to underestimate kids and not to assume that the reasons you had for becoming interested in books apply to kids now. It's probably an argument in parallel to the one about the assumption that reading a book is inherently good for you. Sorry to say but it's not. In both cases, the content and purpose outweighs the fact that a "book" is involved, virtual or physical.