Post for Week 4

In response to Grace Oakley and Jenny Jay's article, "Making Time" for Reading: Factors that Influence the Success of Mulitmedia Reading in the Home. 

Wow! I found this article to be very interesting and enlightening. Oakley and Jay provided a group of students (8-11 years old) and their parents with Electronic Talking Books (ETB) and asked them to use the books at home on their computers for a period of time. After using the books at home, the students and parents were both asked to give their comments on the books.  

I was really surprised to hear some of the parents comments. Some of the parents thought that their children were wasting their time by listening to someone else read the story to them. Studies show that by listening to a fluent reader can improve a student's fluency. These children are only 8 to 11 years old. Have their parents already given up on reading to their children? One parent even commented that the books were to easy and that reading at home should be done with higher level books so that their students are improving their reading skills. How is this going to improve their reading? The parents' perception and knowledge of h ow reading skills are obtained seems to play a large role in shaping their opinions about using ETBs at home.

Not surprisingly, many of the students really enjoyed the electronic books. A couple of the students did comment that they preferred regular books because of their portability, a comment that I keep running across as I read research about electronic books. I still feel that these books can be a very engaging and motivating reading practice for these children and that providing our students, and their parents, with electronic books that can be accessed at home is a really great way of promoting reading.