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Kaitlyn Kelley

Dr. Rieman

English 1103 H

12 November 2010

Transferring the Burden

Is it possible that technology could replace human efforts to effectively teach children to

read? Technology is becoming a medium that educates children on their emergent literacy. Many

children have digital media to entertain and educate them in the form of games and books.

Watching a preschool-aged child play today can now involve a responsive, interactive game that

sings the ABC’s or reads a story book to the child. With the growing abundance and increased

quality of these items, do children now have the means to educate themselves without the

assistance of an adult? In the past, the ones who taught a child to read have been parents,

teachers, and other adults greatly involved in a child’s life. Debra Brant, a professor in the

English department of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, provides a name for one who

teaches someone to read: a “sponsor of literacy” (408). As the age of technology progresses, is it

possible that technology can become a main sponsor of literacy or even replace adults?

At an increasingly young age, children are interacting with media and technology in

many ways. Companies have started harnessing this interaction and play to educate children in

many areas. Digital media exposes children to more abstract concepts, such as “mathematics,

dynamic systems, and communication competence,” that have previously been viewed as too

complex for a certain age group (Lieberman, Bates, So 272-73). These goals are met in various
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forms of digital tools available to children. Leapfrog created the Tag reading system which

allows children to read books, listen to books, and also allows children to click selected areas

that allows them to hear specific words. On top of the story, they can also play games with the

characters in the story. This allows children to interact with literature in a creative and

entertaining manner that allows them to develop necessary learning skills.

Various forms of digital media provide encouragement to preschool-aged children to

advance in their knowledge and openness to learn in many areas. Even though these devices are

typically thought of for use in the home, they have a positive effect in the classroom as well.

Debra Lieberman, Cynthia Bates, and Jiyeon So, researchers at the University of California,

Santa Barbara, discuss the various uses of digital learning devices that aid children’s growth in

many areas such as: learning and interacting with others, analyzing and solving problems, and

improving reasoning (273). Also, these learning programs “provide opportunities for creative

choices or imaginative expression [that] can facilitate children’s creative approaches to learning

and can increase interest and engagement” (275). Yet another advantage to this type of education

is that the media allows a child to progress at a rate they set. The automatic, personal responses

can advance as the child does. In a normal class room setting, waiting on a teacher can hinder the

student if he or she is having to adapt to the expectations of the class as a whole. Children tend

to live up to the expectations set for them. If the expectation is lower than what a child is

capable of, it may be more of a challenge for them to continue learning at a beneficial pace

because their expectations are too easily meet. On the other hand, a child who understands

slower than the class could also be hindered as the student is forced to advance past his or her

ability. According to research, digital media provides an “increase[s] in young children’s

motivation to learn when they are involved with engaging and fun digital media. Computer
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learning activities can elicit high levels of interest in and focus on the learning task that does not

tend to diminish over time” (277). Using these available tools and benefits of technology, at

both home and in the classroom, can allow a child to increase their knowledge and interest in

learning.

Specific to emerging literacy, there are many advantages that a digital device provides

that an adult cannot. Lieberman, Bates, and So find merit in the fact that the programs provide

immediate feedback and personalized progress. Different learning speeds in a classroom, on top

of the single expectation level, can cause a student to be easily distracted; the responsive media

decreases potential “delay[s] that could cause attention to wander” (277). The sustained ability

for the technology to interest and entertain a child contributes to it being a stronger motivator

than a classroom environment (276). With increased attention and drive to learn, the child can

gain more information. Another factor that can add to this enhanced knowledge is an increased

memory. Lieberman, Bates, and So discuss a research study in which “kindergarten children

developed stronger increases in memory” with the use of technology compared to students who

were not given the opportunity (276). In addition to increased memory, “animated multimedia

books enhanced awareness of letter sounds and words” for children aged three to six, (274-75).

Because of the ability to focus a child’s learning and their capacity to retain information, digital

media has been proven to be more effective than traditional teaching methods in the areas of

vocabulary, spelling, reading, writing skills, word recognition, and word creation.

As with many things, there are also negative aspects of this education method. While

using digital books, a child can often get distracted by the icons, colors, and animations or

illustrations, causing them to lose focus on the actual plot or storyline (Korat and Shamir 249).

All of the features tend to cause focus to be redirected to the games. Another limitation of the
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digital interaction is that the children were not able to increase their awareness of “rhyming and

phonemic awareness” because of the digitalized, recorded voice (249). Though the animations

can increase a child’s understanding of the story, a designer has to be careful not to create any

inconsistencies. When a child can pick up on the inconsistencies between the storyline and

animations, their comprehension levels decrease (249). With an effort to improve these

unconstructive applications, the abilities of digital media to educate children will be increasingly

successful.

For an effective digital teaching device, many things have to be in place. O. Korat and A.

Shamir preformed a study in which they designed and tested an e-book for children. They

preformed this study using three groups of kindergarten students: a control group that was not

exposed to a story, a group who was read the story by an adult, and a group that was given their

created e-book. In 2007, they argued that “the software available for children aged 3-8 is not

very satisfactory as a tool for supporting literacy” (Korat and Shamir 250). Their goal was to

create an e-book that stressed the positive and suppressed the negative of items already on the

market that they analyzed. They found that some “features available in the software…can be

more effective in certain ways than an adult reading to children” (249). These improvements

included interactive features that increased their understanding of the plot and a program that

allows children to follow the highlighted text increasing their phonological awareness. For their

study, they decided to create an e-book with three options for the child: “‘Read the story only’,

‘Read the story with dictionary’, and ‘Read story and play’” (250). A function was included to

unlock the ‘Read story and play’ mode only after they had read all of the words on each page.

Their study proved that children in both groups, one using technology and the other having

listened to an adult read the story, improved in areas of vocabulary, word recognition, and
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phonological awareness. The children in the group having used the e-book proved to have a

slightly higher increase in scores from a given pre-test to the post-test. They concluded that

technologies with the proper features “have the potential to support cognitive development and

learning… [and] could constitute a good source for supporting young children’s language

development, story comprehension and other emergent literacy skills” (258). They proved that

with the increase in quality, technology is capable of teaching a child to read.

After reading Korat and Shamir’s study, I would like the take the liberty of proposing

some improvements to be included in existing media devices. The most important characteristic

would be to have the voice of the reader sound more realistic, less digitalized. One person would

read the given story on each page for a ‘reading with voice’ option. Also, like the Leap Frog tag

reading system, I would include spots where a child can indicate a word they would like to be

read. For these spots, the person would record each individual word so that they sound natural

without the whole sentence. I believe this would increase a child’s ability to process the words

as he or she would hear them read from an adult. This would aid in their ability to learn rhyming

and phonemic awareness, which is to say that they would distinguish letter sounds, such as the

letters “d” and “t” in “bid” and “bit” (“phoneme”). Another feature I would suggest is a screen

that had a picture of all of the pages of the story. This allows for a visual storyboard that allows

a child to see the progression of the story. I believe this would increase a child’s comprehension

to see all of the pages on one screen. There are still many improvements to be made to existent

devices on the market to create the perfect device.

As these devices are refined, the power they possess to educate children will increase.

However, the relationship between child and parent, student and teacher must also be examined. At what

cost do we allow technology to become the sole sponsor of literacy? Relationships are built from many
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activities; education being one of them. The unintended negative results must also be examined before a

complete shift takes place. It leads one to wonder if it will affect a child’s respect for his or her teacher in

more advanced years. Perhaps a way to compensate for this would be to include applications intended for

both child and parent, student and teacher to work together. Another area to consider is one that involves

an unavailable parent. Some children do not have the opportunity to learn from their parents due to

various interferences. If a parent is illiterate, the child is immediately hindered because of the parent’s

inability to share this knowledge. Also, many parents work busy schedules that are not conducive for

educating their children. If a parent can provide a child with a tool to educate them when they are not

able to, whether for time and knowledge reasons, doors would open for a child.

With the continued evolution of technology, the responsibility of teaching children to

read can be transferred to the qualified shoulders of digital media. It has been proven that quality

devices work as well, if not better, than adult interaction. This shift has the potential to open

doors to many. Children can now take education into their own hands with a device that can

progress and accompany them on their emergent literacy. A device that can automatically and

efficiently assess a child’s progression could allow him or her to learn despite the schedule of a

busy parent. The progress that education can make while implementing technology is incredible.

Technology, as a sponsor of literacy, proves to be an effective and useful sponsor of literacy.

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Works Cited

Brandt, Deborah. “Sponsors of Literacy.” Writing About Writing: A College Reader. Eds.

Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 403-426 . Print.

Korat, O., and A. Shamir. “Electronic Books Versus Adult Readers: Effects on Children’s

Emergent Literacy as a Function of Social Class.” Journal of Computer Assisted

Learning. 23 (2007): 248-59). Academic Search Premier. Web. 3 Nov. 2010.

Lieberman, Debra A., Cynthia H. Bates, and Jiyeon So. “Young Children’s Learning with

Digital Media.” Computers in the Schools. 26.4 (2009): 271-83. Academic Search

Premier. Web. 18 Oct. 2010.

"Phoneme." Encarta Dictionary. Encarta. Web. 11 Nov. 2010.