Selena Woodward from Australia left a comment on my literacy apps blog post which prompted me to think more deeply about the wonderful interactivity of some of the iPad apps I have been sharing lately.
As I was working with the very young children (6 year olds) on this week I was thinking that all this iPad interactivity, on its own, may not actually be such a good thing.
My favourite literacy app at the moment is The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore that I posted about recently.
Did I tell you that I now have an iPad2 that will project through a data projector?? Great when you only have access to one iPad. Way cool except that the VGA cable keeps falling out if you jiggle the iPad too much. But I digress….
Anyway….
When we had the book ‘Morris Lessmore’ projected from the iPad onto the classroom ordinary whiteboard we could stop at the various places and discuss what was happening in the story and draw deeper understanding from the text and nothing particularly interactive happened in the story unless the user wanted it too which is something I really liked about the app.
Some other stories progress automatically from page to page which doesn’t give the teacher much of an opportunity to help children make connections with the text. When I use these texts I put myself in my happy place and wake up ten minutes later- just like watching an animated cartoon on TV really- except that it’s on an iPad.
Then when we had finished the shared reading the children were naturally keen to read the book on their own. They were much more intent on doing the interactive bits than listening/reading the story.
I wondered then if all the interactivity of the app was actually lessening the children’s desire to actually read the text for themselves.
I told them that the interactive bits wouldn’t work until at least they actually waited and listened to the text. I lied and they soon found out and exposed me as a fraud and shared how they could get the interactive bits going without having to wait for the text to be read. Clever them!
Although they loved the app, did they equally love the reading experience??
I am not so sure?
What do you think?
There is something about having to work a little bit at things that encourages learning. I agree with you that there seems to be a lessened desire to do too much of their own thinking. For a long time I have resisted allowing the children to play computer games that in my opinion were not challenging them to think very much at all. I would much rather they spent time creating a game. Atmosphir is one my class have been exploring. That to me seems much more about active learning. Similarly with stories. These sort of interactive texts can be brilliant as catalysts for the children to write their own. The “inanimate Alice” website is a good example of a story that has been used as a starter for children’s own writing.
I have heard of Inanimate Alice before but never actually had a look at it. Apart from the irritating sound track I think it could be good. Thanks for prompting me to actually take a look.