ebooks – Media! Tech! Parenting!

I recently discovered an interesting comment on a Linked In discussion, part of the ed-tech topics that I often follow.

The conversation asked the question, “Are tablets and iPads the new textbooks?” and the discussion was about an Educause article, E-Books in Higher Education: Are We There Yet? Educause is a non-profit sector organization that aims to help individuals “who lead, manage, and use information technology to shape strategic IT decisions at every level within higher education.”

In the Linked In conversation, Randy Tanner (Linked In profile) described the research of a colleague who is a doctoral candidate at Capella University whose dissertation research investigates the influence of iPads, tablets, and smart phones on pre-schoolers. According to Tanner:

One amazing fact she shared is that the typical 4-year-old is technically more competent with tablets and smart phones than the average adult. Think of the impact to primary school methodology. This isn’t the tech-savvy Millennial Y-generation; this the post-Millennial Z-Gen who may never touch a desktop PC and categorize laptops with 8-track players.

Continue reading “Comparing Tech Skills: Pre-Schoolers vs. Adults” →

What’s better — a real book that a person holds and cuddles, rereads or loans to a friend, or an i-book/e-book that is digital, portable, and much easier to lug around? I’m often asked to take one side or another, but I think that different books are useful in different situations. Moreover, e-books provide well-written and absorbing digital reading experiences that counterbalance the typically truncated prose that kids find on most websites. The goal of every parent and teacher is to help a child love to read, so whether a child gravitates to one type of book or the other doesn’t really matter.

This week I read a great article in one of my magazines (the old-fashioned kind and my favorite), Multimedia & Internet @ Schools. Written by Stephen Abram, PBooks vs. EBooks: Are there Educational Issues? goes into some detail comparing and contrasting the two types of reading media. The magazine’s website makes some articles available for free, but sadly this isn’t one of them. Check back to see if it become free to view because the article is worth reading in its entirety.