Enhanced e-books: new reading experience or just
another
way of keeping children in front of screen?
way of keeping children in front of screen?
Aline
Frederico
The
University of British Columbia
School
of Library and Information Studies
LIBR
559B – 001 New Media for Children and Young Adults
Professor
Eric Meyers
25th
September 2012.
Abstract:
This paper aims to discuss the main
issues that concern enhanced e-books for children, starting for its very definition
and main characteristics. What differentiates it from a paper book and from
other digital media as games and animation?
How is it being used and what are the possible advantages and disadvantages
of those uses? Do enhanced e-books for children help in the literacy process or
it causes more harm than good? Finally, some opportunities for further research
are presented.
Key-words: enhanced e-books; book app; children; literacy;
Introduction
Enhanced e-books are not necessarily a new idea, during the 90s and
2000s, they were present in the format of CD-ROMs or DVDs. Since Apple’s iPad
release in April 2010, however, these books seem to have found their ideal
platform, on a light portable device with the possibility of interaction with a
high resolution touch screen.
The versatility of the digital environment created a new world of
possibilities for an e-book and many enhanced e-books started popping out as
books apps. According to Henry Volans, head of Faber Digital, the digital
branch of the British publishing house, “one of the great things about an iPad
app is there are almost no constraints about what you can put in, what types of
media you can use” (Lea, R et al.,
2011).
An enhanced e-book, then, can be defined as an electronic book equipped
with “tools that can support highly interactive, multimedia experiences”(Chiong
et al., 2012). There are many different possible tools, but the most common are
audio (narration, sound effects), video, animation, interactivity, games, additional texts and images. Some even have the
possibility of content creation, where the user can create audio recordings,
take photographs or create his/her own story.
It is estimated that by the end of 2012 more than 100 million iPads will
have been sold all over the world, most of them in North America (Graham, 2012).
But who is using these tablets? Stuart Dredge, a media journalist at The
Observer, reminds us that, at its release, “the idea of handing over a touchscreen gadget costing
at least £429 to a sticky-fingered child seemed ridiculous”. Only two years
later, a Nielsen’s report shows that children under 12 years old use tablets in
70% of the households where the device is present, and 57% of them use it for
educational purposes (Nielsen, 2012).
If book apps were an interesting
enhancement for adult books, for children’s books they seemed even more
natural, transporting to the digital format some characteristics that some
children books already had, for example, the interactivity of pop-up books, and
taking it to another level. The high resolution of the screens also made
picture books look bright and beautiful.
Soon, app producers started to
realize that apps for children could be an important segment of the market. In
2011, 80% of the top selling paid apps in the Education category of the iTunes
Store are aimed for children from toddlers to teenagers and almost half of it
is aimed for preschool and elementary children. (Shuler, 2012). Most enhanced
e-book apps, as an extension of the concept of picture book, are aimed for
those age groups.
As the popularity of enhanced
e-books rises and especially when they start to get to the hands of children at
a very early age, scholars and different parts of the society start to ponder
about their advantages, disadvantages and possible “damage” they can cause to their
users.
Is it a
book?
The first issue that comes to
enhanced e-books is very basic and questions their very nature: is it still a
book?
In the case of adult enhanced e-books,
many people question that it looks like a DVD, which has the film — in this
case, the text — and its “extras” and many of those extras can actually be
videos. When considering children’s enhanced e-books, it is the boundaries
between those books and a game or an animated film that are put into question.
In both cases, the answer actually depends on the app.
As with any new area, it is still a
time for experimentation and in some cases creators exceed in the idea of
exploring the possibilities the media can offer. The result can be apps where the
features end up being more prioritized than the narrative. Even being described
as book apps, it really depends on the reader to evaluate if it keeps its
essence as a book or if should actually fit in another category. To be
considered an enhanced e-book, and a good one, some authors like Katie Bircher
(2012) and Elizabeth Bird (2011) present some criteria:
· An enhanced book must
not exaggerate in the interactivity, or it can overwhelm or distract the
reader;
· It also must have a balance between the features: “the deepest understanding and
appreciation of the story comes from interplay among all the parts”(Bircher,
2012);
· Keeping the action of turning the page seems to be one of the aspects that most
characterizes an app as being a book instead of an animated film. It is also a
moment of pause in the process of interaction with the screen and a reflection
on what your are doing/reading that is not available in most other digital
contents;
· Having the possibility to turn off the features is also important and it gives the reader the
possibility of coming back to the traditional book and mean that the narrative
— and its original text and images — is still the core of the app. Turning the
narration off is also important in parent-child co-reading;
· It must have simple
navigation and/or clues on how to do it without interrupting or interfering
in the narrative, it is also important that you be allowed to jump from one
part to another of the story at any time you want;
· The features
must be part of the narrative in a
way that they create surprise and joy;
· Finally, as the designation “enhanced e-book”
suggests, it “adds or extends the original book”. “A successful picture book
app fulfills the requirements of a traditional picture book, but with an extra
oomph unique to the digital format. Adaptations of print books present faithful
representations with all interactive elements enhancing—not undermining—the
original narratives” (Bircher, 2012).
Some people, though, do not believe that the features can really enhance
reading, on the contrary, they consider it “too much information” that
interferes in the uniqueness of the readers experience. Abigail R. Esman (2012),
writing for Forbes magazine, says: “I fear what they will rob from readers, the experience of make-believe,
the chance to stretch the boundaries of what we think we know. I fear for
children whose imaginations will grow as flaccid and flabby as their bodies are
in this era of childhood obesity”. Ideas like that are what Nancy K. Baym (2010)
would consider technological determinism, as if those books, by extending the
information the reader has from the story, would actually freeze their
imaginations.
Old and new
contexts of use and its consequences
Some features present in enhanced
e-books, apart from expanding the reader experience, have some benefits that go
beyond the story itself.
Most enhanced e-books for
preschoolers come with an audio narration feature. Though some of then do not
come with a turn off option, there is always the possibility of turning the
audio off your device if you want to read yourself the story to a child. One of
the main advantages of book apps in comparison to other apps for young children
– like games and videos – is that, although it is electronic, by co-reading,
parents and children are still in an intergenerational exchange that enables
relationship building and permits interactions outside the screen. It can, by the
use of an electronic device, make the bound between parents and children
stronger instead of isolating the child in their own world.
On the other hand, the possibility
of having “someone” read the story to your still illiterate child when you are
busy is a great advantage. More than 60% of parents reported to always use this
feature when the child is left alone with the tablet (Vaala, 2012). It also can
be a benefit in households where storytelling is not a habit or where children
are not sufficiently exposed to books as they should for their literacy
development. However, it is important to analyse that this possibility tends to
create a new “Sesame Street effect”, where illiterate children that did not
have access to books before start to have access to enhanced e-books and
improve their reading skills over time, but children who access those books
with the contribution of an adult may have even higher improvement, increasing
the gap instead of reducing it.
The aspect of having many titles
available while traveling or commuting is considered one the best advantages of
tablets and e-readers (Rainie, L. et al, 2012) and many parents are using their readiness with
children as a manner of distracting them in those situations. Enhanced e-books
seem then great to engage the child, and it may be considered “better” or “more
educational” than playing a game or watching videos. Qualitatively, there are different
kinds of screen time, some more passive and some more intellectually
stimulating, but some specialists alert that, specially for young children,
replacing traditional “real” playtime with digital playtime may be detrimental
to children’s development and creativity: “What children see or interact with
on the screen is only a representation of things in the real world. The screen
symbols aren’t able to provide as full an experience for kids as the
interactions they can have with real world people and things. And while playing
games with apps and computers could be considered more active than TV viewing,
it is still limited to what happens between the child and a device — it doesn’t
involve the whole child’s body, brain, and senses. (Strauss, 2012).
Using electronic devices to distract
a child that starts crying in a public situation or even at home is also an
existing practice that Strauss alarm to be potentially harmful: “I’ve become
concerned that many children today are learning to cope with their feelings and
relationships by distraction, and that screens of all kinds have become easy
substitutes for the inner life experiences and personal interactions children
need to have” (Strauss, 2012).
Many parents seem aware of those
potential problems and 81% consider that the printed book is better for reading
with a child (Rainie, L. et al, 2012). Other studies confirm the last information, and
though the presence of tablets in households is increasing significantly,
parents are still hesitant about how they should use e-books with their
preschool children, most of them still preferring co-reading printed books (see
graph below) (Vaala, 2012). They also mentioned in the survey that one of their
main concerns about e-books is that they increase children’s screen time.
Source: (Vaala, 2012).
Enhanced
e-books and literacy
Another key issue in regards to
enhanced e-books for children — present in how Katie Bircher and Elizabeth Bird
evaluate book apps — is if they contribute to children’s literacy or if they
more distract than instruct.
As seen in the graph above, more
than 50% of parents that co-read e-books with their children somewhat agree or
completely agree that “Features in e-books enable/encourage children to read
alonechild”. The features they believe to be helpful in the process are:
clicking a word sounds it out; word highlights during narration; and audio
narration. Some features, though, they believe cause more distraction than
help, like hotspots/animations embedded in illustration and games and videos
provided in the e-book. (Vaala et al., 2012)
A study comparing printed books and
e-books (basic and enhanced) (Chiong, 2012) showed that though enhanced e-books
are more engaging to preschool children than printed and basic e-books, they
cause more distraction, showed by the dramatic increase in the number of
non-content related actions made by the child and decrease of the content
related ones. As a result, children’s story recall was affected in a negative
way with enhanced e-books.
Christopher Harris (2012) questioned
the results of this study due to its small sample (32 child-parent pairs), its
“questionable variety in its demographics” and the criteria used to consider an
action non-content related. For non-content related, where considered “Parent
[or Child] talks about book features” and “Parent [or Child] talks about
hotspots”. He questioned that these types of actions could not happen in the
printed book or in the basic e-books, simply because there are no features or
hotspots to be mentioned, but that it does not necessarily mean distraction.
Research possibilities
Due to the novelty of the subject,
more and broader research definitely needs to be done, specially concerning
young children, as the contact with these kinds of book may influence their
development. Some opportunities are on studying the learning and literacy
potential of enhanced e-books in many different groups of readers: children who
are not interested in traditional reading; children with disabilities; children
with no previous access to technology in comparison to children with broad
access. Do they engage more and have better understanding of the story? Is
there any change in their cognitive development? How do children who have
access to this technology at an early age will develop as readers? What are the
differences in literacy development between children who co-read an enhanced
e-book with an adult and children who “co-read” it by listening to the audio
narration feature?
The context of use is another
interesting subject for research. Who is responsible for the introduction of
this technology in households? Where does usage take place? How much time do children
spend reading enhanced e-books per day? How many books do they read? Does it
influence the amount of time they spend with printed books and with other media?
Which titles are chosen and why? Do they have an equivalent print version?
Finally, there is the possibility of
analyzing enhanced e-books in the educational context. How can the teacher/
librarian mediate the contact with these books? What changes can be seen in
children’s engagement with texts at school with the insertion of these devices?
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