Reading practices in a digital world
Talk by Dr. Vivian Howard (Dalhousie University, Canada)
Thursday 25th June was an opportunity for librarians to get
together at the State Library of WA to hear Dr Howard talk about two research
projects, an event organised by ALIAWest and InfoSci@ECU.
The first case study was on reading apps for pre-school children. Looking into parents and caregivers
perception of reading apps, how they choose reading apps and comparison between
reading apps to traditional books.
I really enjoyed this section. Even though I no longer work in children’s
services, or in a public library, I found the study of high value and it would
be interesting if someone did a similar such study with Australian
parents. I tweeted during the event as
my effort to take notes, as did a few other people, so feel free to look at
tweets under the #aliawest or @aliawest.
Some of what I took from this study was that
- Little is known about the impact of touch screen technology and apps on emergent literacy.
- The American Academy of Paediatrics recommend NO screen time before the age of 2 and limited time for older children.
- Reading to preschool children is important to development of early literacy skills.Traditional books are better!
- Bonding time is just as important to parents as developing emergent literacy skills It is all about balance, children can be exposed to numerous reading apps and can benefit from the positive aspects of traditional reading and apps.
- As Librarians, we can help parents chose apps that reinforce early literacy skills and the narrative. Up to us to make sure we are not left out of the conversation.
The second study to be discussed was looking at the program of “One
Book, One Nova Scotia”. A program to
attempt to encourage residents of Nova Scotia to read the same book and
participate in the conversation about the book.
This has happened over a number of years, but this study looked over a 2
year period. This was quite interesting
as I remember a time when such an event happened in Western Australia as a
joint effort between Perth International Arts Festival and State Library of
WA. What I took most from this study was
that people are looking for community engagement, community building but such
programs need a structure to make such shared discussions/interactions to
happen. It was interesting that the use
of social media wasn’t particularly successful, but the potential for such a program
utilising social media could lead to community building. Especially for an area that is widely
dispersed and only one major city. The
goal of the program was to create a reading culture, to give the opportunity
for social interaction and support lifelong learning. Whether they achieved that was hard to tell
by the results of the study, but the fact the program is still running gives
you the sense that it is making some inroads.
I really enjoyed this talk and there are a few things I would like to
think more about. Such as how can we
help parents find appropriate apps? How
can we as librarians get involved in this conversation? Is the idea of a “One Book” program a good one? Can we bring it back to WA and create that reading
culture and build social engagement?
Should we?
What do you think?