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Increasingly, those who are interested in how mobile technology is being used to raise and educate our geeklets are telling us that if we just use these Android, iOS or other smart mobile tools in ways that simply mimic analogue devices then we are doing everyone concerned a disservice. Ewan McIntosh probably puts it betterthan anyone. His major issue is not allowing students to personalise and "own" the iPad by putting them in 1980s computer lab like spaces.
Nowhere is this more obvious than with books.
Many schools that are trialling and testing out the iPad as a learning device see it as a way to cut down on oversized textbooks and simply provide a new method of delivering large slabs of text. This is a very limiting view of the potential of eBooks and how they could be used to develop 21st century skills. (Of course, others are pushing the new tools to its limits.) Even traditional publishers who are creating (but mostly transferring) somereally beautiful stories to the iPad have a limited view of what eBooks should be.
The eBooks being developed for our children are interactive, sure: touch the pig and it makes a pig noise or touch the light on and off or even shake the iPad to make it snow. But these things have been tried and tested. Remember children's books in the 90s that came with speakers and batteries that would make sounds and read the story along with you? In effect these texts for the iPad and other devices are electronic pop up books sitting on a device that has the ability to link to all the knowledge of the world.
The prevailing view is that "the book" is a self-contained entity.
The idea is that the story and all that needs to be said, or all that a child can be interested in, are held within its pages. But can we even think of an eBook as having pages? The idea of a page is very strong, and we want to transfer that idea to the screen because pages are something we are so used to, something we have read from for thousands of years (Goodness, Apple even named a core app after it). Yet it is a screen. They are not pages. There isn't a first page or an end page when it comes to the internet or digital media more generally, so why do we feel the need to limit our children's exploration of stories and narrative on devices not limited by a specific number of pages?
We shouldn't. And the new wave of digital publishers who can break out of the idea that the story is owned by the author, and realize that the story and how it is told and what is of interest actually belongs to the child, will produce eBook apps that better fit with the 21st century. They'll produce eBooks that don't always have a start or end page, but which take children on a journey through the knowledge- and image- and video-rich world of resources and stories that are out there.
Those publishers will create hypertextual eBooks that tap into children's imagination and their desire to explore and play (Peapod Labs have begun to develop apps in this vein). They will make room for children to develop skills in media literacy, understand networks and how to organize information and create their own new stories out of the things that they know and the world that they inhabit.
Classroom teacher and literacy coach, Angie Harrison, emailed me about these exact issues after reading my recent piece on Second Wave Apps. She said:
With that in mind, what types of eBooks are we looking for? Here are just three ideas (there are more of course):
1. eBooks that allow children control over the narrative
What would an eBook look like if a child could change the ending? By this I don't mean choose a different ending, we have been doing that for decades with "choose your own adventure" books. I mean really create their own new ending. Or, as Angie suggests, how could a child reading a book help a character think through a decision they have to make?
What if a child really liked a character who wasn't the main character? What if the book allowed you to follow their story instead? Or, we saw the story from the perspective of the child's teddy bear, or another character in the book which changed the story significantly. Then, consider that all of these functions and interactivity are being driven by the reader and their decisions and their ideas about how the narrative could evolve.
2. eBooks that support 21st century skills
I agree with you: what 21st century skills are and how we define them is still very much up for grabs. But, for the sake of simplicity let us say we want children to learn through eBooks: how to think about the world, how to navigate through networks and information and how to be playful and imaginative in their approach. Books do this already in some ways, and this doesn't mean we write books about media literacy; it means we incorporate the world of the internet and the information that is available into children's books. We use Creative Commons images and videos, we bring crowdsourcing to children's stories so that they can watch the video of the bear that Angie wants her children to watch because someone tagged the word bear with a great video of a bear and now the reader can link to that (just like the note taking function in Kindle). We want stories that are fiction which lead children to learn new facts and ebooks of non-fiction that inspire and allow children to create their own works of fiction.
3. eBooks that nurture exploration
When I read Angie's email, I understood what she was talking about because it is what most inspires me as a GeekDad when I am playing and engaging with my boys. What brings me the most joy is when they ask questions and I support them to find the answers themselves. I want to see the eBooks of the future help develop those questions in my boys and then give them the user interface and tools to explore. Of course, this exploration then needs to go beyond the book and beyond the internet. But, an eBook can go a ways toward helping children develop frameworks for exploration and help them learn the art of problem solving and information seeking. If books have traditionally nurtured a love of stories and words and knowledge, I want eBooks to empower my children to tell their own stories, to make up new words and definitions and to recognize and embrace knowledge in a way that is dynamic and creates a love of life.
The eBook is in its infancy.
I look forward to watching it grow as a medium and become an inspiring tool in supporting children's learning and development.
- Bringing Children's Books Alive as Apps (wired.com)
- GeekDad Opinion: We Need a Children's Apps Rating System (wired.com)
- Making a Ruckus With Big-Name Mobile Storytelling (wired.com)
