Digital Book Reading Research Articles

Experiment protocol: Exploring the sense of smell in digital book reading

This paper outlines the background and design, and their rationale, for conducting a small-scale experiment to examine the effect of olfactory stimulation on children's reading outcomes. The theoretical underpinnings of the study and its significance for the reading field are outlined, followed by a detailed description of the study procedure, design, measures, and instruments. Sixty-six Norwegian children will be recruited to participate in shared book reading sessions with a specially designed digital olfactory book. We test the hypothesis that olfactory-enhanced reading increases children's engagement in the reading activity and through this engagement, will increase their vocabulary learning, story recall, and overall interest in reading and smell. The study has important implications for children's reading, olfaction media research, and design studies.

Interactive Digital Book Reading in Families with Refugee Backgrounds

ABSTRACT Abundant research has explored interactive book reading and children’s literacy learning, but little is known about interactive digital book reading among families with refugee backgrounds. Drawing upon theoretical perspectives on social semiotics multimodality, this study investigates what happens when parents and children with a refugee background read digital children’s books multimodally. Data sources include ethnographic interviews, video recordings of family conversations, artifacts, and descriptive field notes based on observations. The findings present three common themes: selecting books, meaning making through semiotic resources, and discussing and learning in two languages. Implications include the importance of valuing digital multimodal and dual-language children’s books and acknowledging multiple interactions among parents, siblings, and young children of families with refugee backgrounds.

Making Space for Visual Literacy in Literacy Teacher Preparation: Preservice Teachers Coding to Design Digital Books.

To reduce the lag between highly visual texts in elementary classrooms and a lack of emphasis on visual literacy in teacher preparation, this study explored preservice teachers’ coding in the design of a visually-enhanced digital book. A qualitative case study shaped the research design and data collection, including ten digital book artifacts and reflections from preservice teachers. Content analysis identified modes of communication evident within digital books, while thematic analysis examined reflections. One book included all modes of communication. Books lacked consistency of supportive, accessible, and engaging features such as narration, captions, and scene detail. Reflections indicated possibilities and visual affordances of digital book reading in the classroom, at the cost of technological challenges and time required to use a new tool. Findings call for a shift to acknowledge and incorporate visual literacy theories and practices into teacher preparation programs to prepare preservice teachers for digitally literate classrooms.

Physically‐based Book Simulation with Freeform Developable Surfaces

AbstractReading books or articles digitally has become accessible and widespread thanks to the large amount of affordable mobile devices and distribution platforms. However, little effort has been devoted to improving the digital book reading experience, despite studies showing disadvantages of digital text media consumption, such as diminished memory recall and enjoyment, compared to physical books. In addition, a vast amount of physical, printed books of interest exist, many of them rare and not easily physically accessible, such as out‐of‐print art books, first editions, or historical tomes secured in museums. Digital replicas of such books are typically either purely text based, or consist of photographed pages, where much of the essence of leafing through and experiencing the actual artifact is lost. In this work, we devise a method to recreate the experience of reading and interacting with a physical book in a digital 3D environment. Leveraging recent work on static modeling of freeform developable surfaces, which exhibit paper‐like properties, we design a method for dynamic physical simulation of such surfaces, accounting for gravity and handling collisions to simulate pages in a book. We propose a mix of 2D and 3D models, specifically tailored to represent books to achieve a computationally fast simulation, running in real time on mobile devices. Our system enables users to lift, bend and flip book pages by holding them at arbitrary locations and provides a holistic interactive experience of a virtual 3D book.

“That’s a Big Bad Wolf!”: Learning through Teacher-Child Talk During Shared Reading of a Story Book App

Touch screen tablets and story book apps provide opportunities for teachers to support young children’s shared reading experiences. Much research has examined the benefits of digital book reading in children’s learning. However, less is known about how very young children engage with and learn from interactive story book apps and how teachers support these early reading experiences. The case study reported on here was conducted in the north of England and explored how one teacher scaffolded a young child’s learning and interactions during shared reading of a story book app (Three Little Pigs) in her early years classroom. The teacher used a wide range of words, repetition, and questioning strategies to engage the child with the story content and maintain her interest which provided a positive experience for the child. The teacher also offered encouragement and technical assistance to scaffold learning. These important teacher supports afforded opportunities for the child to learn about language and literacy in meaningful ways with a digital device. This generates practical recommendations on how early childhood teachers can effectively engage young children with story book apps in the classroom.

Understanding parents’ conflicting beliefs about children’s digital book reading

In light of growing evidence that many parents are deeply concerned about their young children’s increasing technology use, in this paper we report on aspects of a study funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, where we sought to understand parents’ views on children’s digital book reading. We introduced seven families to four award-winning digital books (story apps and e-books), observed how the mothers mediated their children’s digital book reading over a period of several weeks and subsequently interviewed the mothers about their shared reading experiences with the digital books. Focusing on the interview data and drawing on the theoretical framework of socio-materiality, this paper reports on how parents’ views about digital book features were entangled with their social perceptions of the value of digital reading. Analysis of parents’ accounts show three conflicted themes of trust/mistrust, agency/dependency and nostalgia/realism in parental attitudes towards their children’s reading on screens. The paper concludes with a discussion of how these findings regarding the unresolved dichotomies inherent in parental views about their children’s digital reading are highly relevant for future research on parental mediation of their children’s learning with digital media.

Mother–child interactions during shared reading with digital and print books

ABSTRACT This study explored the quality of interactions in mother–child shared reading with a print book and with an electronic book on an i-Pad. The study involved a Turkish mother and her 5-year-old son who were observed at home when reading the printed book Ay’ı kim çaldı? (Who stole the moon?) and its exact digital match. The shared book reading interactions were analysed in terms of (a) the amount of talk with the different book formats and (b) the content of the mother–child talk including the focus of the talk, expansion of ideas and behavioural-related talk. The results revealed that print book reading engaged the child in higher-level thinking compared to digital book reading. There was greater frequency of non-immediate talk in the print book reading compared to the digital book reading. Also, results suggested that the digital book encouraged more behaviour-related talk related to negotiating the book sharing routine.

Digital Books with Dynamic Text and Speech Output: Effects on Sight Word Reading for Preschoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Despite the importance of literacy in today's educational curriculum, learning to read is a challenge for many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). One of the foundational skills of early literacy learning is the ability to recognize sight words. This study used a single-subject, multiple-probe, across-participants design, to investigate the effects of a new software feature, dynamic text and speech output, on the acquisition of sight words by three pre-literate preschoolers with ASD during shared digital book reading experiences. All participants demonstrated successful acquisition of the target sight words with minimal exposure to the words. Limitations and future research directions are discussed, including the importance of investigating how the new software feature can be integrated into a more comprehensive literacy curriculum.

Digital Book Reading and Communication Platform for Android

College students have become the mainstream of the user Android intelligent mobile phone market. However, there are only few platforms based on Android for college students to study and communicate. Through the analysis of the demand situation, this paper studies and develops the campus digital library reading communication platform based on Android. Using the Java Web technology, Android application development technology and WiFi network environment, the system meets the functional requirements of the students learning and communication.

Digital Book and Its Evolution

Based on the analysis of scientific papers and sources, the presumptions on the future of digital book are analyzed and most important of them are picked out: the birth of the digital computer (as the medium of the digital book reading and creating), the rise of hypertext (as a new influence upon reading and writing digital books) and the foundation of the internet prototype (as a new medium for publishing and accessing digital books). The most important facts in the history of digital book are picked out and analyzed. According to product life cycle theory, the evolution of the digital book is proposed to be divided into several stages: the stage before the digital book (the presumptions of origin, 1946–1971), the beginning of the digital book (first stage, 1971–2001), and the growth of the digital book (second stage starting from 2001). The present situation of the digital book in the product life cycle is shown and some future prognoses are presented.

Digital Book and Its Evolution

Based on the analysis of scientific papers and sources, the presumptions on the future of digital book are analyzed and most important of them are picked out: the birth of the digital computer (as the medium of the digital book reading and creating), the rise of hypertext (as a new influence upon reading and writing digital books) and the foundation of the internet prototype (as a new medium for publishing and accessing digital books). The most important facts in the history of digital book are picked out and analyzed.According to product life cycle theory, the evolution of the digital book is proposed to be divided into several stages: the stage before the digital book (the presumptions of origin, 1946–1971), the beginning of the digital book (first stage, 1971–2001), and the growth of the digital book (second stage starting from 2001).The present situation of the digital book in the product life cycle is shown and some future prognoses are presented.