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Print or digital? Adults grapple with which is the best way to read — not only for themselves, but especially when it comes to their kids. Whether or not parents prefer print books over interactive e-books for their kids, the question is, what’s actually better for them?

Depends on what you’re trying to achieve. According to a study of a small group of parents released today by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, kids age 3 to 6 remembered more narrative details — “What happened in the story?” — from print books than from enhanced e-books with multimedia features.

But when kids were asked one plot question for each story, (i.e., “Why did x do y?”), there was no difference between the print book readers and the enhanced e-book readers.

“I would definitely make the distinction that the platform affected recall instead of comprehension,” said Cynthia Chiong, the lead author of the survey conducted at New York Hall of Science’s Preschool Place.

The study, the first of its kind to qualify the difference between basic and enhanced e-readers versus print books, examined 32 pairs of parents and their 3–6-year-old children as they read a print book and an e-book together. Half of the pairs read a basic e-book and the other half read an enhanced e-book.

Researchers found that while the multimedia features of enhanced e-books grabbed children’s attention, those same features also distracted young readers and led more to “non-content related interactions.” Features like animation, sound effects, videos, and games made it more difficult for some parents to keep kids focused on reading and diminished kids’ recall of the text. Parents continually had to tell kids not to turn the page or not to touch the tablets, according to Chiong.

The implication? Parents and teachers should choose basic e-books like the Kindle or Nook over enhanced e-books, such as the iPad, if they want a more literacy-focused co-reading experience with children. Prompting kids with questions that relate to the text, labeling and naming objects, and encouraging kids to talk about the book’s content from their own perspective all elicit kids to be more verbal, and can lead to improved vocabulary and language development, the study states.

But if “engagement” is the objective, the issue gets murkier. When it came time to measuring “child-book” engagement, based on the child’s direct attention and touch, more kids showed higher levels of engagement for the e-books than the print books, though a majority were equally engaged by both book types. Children also physically interacted with the enhanced e-book more than when reading either the print or basic e-book.

“Kids loved the enhanced e-books,” Chiong said. “It was great to see the level of engagement, how much they were enjoying it — and that’s one of our goals as parents, is engaging kids. If this can do that, especially in kids who might not otherwise be interested, it’s perfect.”

Chiong added that this study focused on younger kids — questions and priorities will be different for measuring the differences for older readers.

PARENTS’ EXPERIENCE

Parents’ comments showed a wide range of reactions. Some parents appreciated the iPad’s effect on their young readers.

“They’re able to hear the words…It came alive. I don’t have to do the reading,” said the mother of a three-year old. “Not only that, they pay more attention to the iPad. Sound effects were an excellent idea — they like the books with sound effects.”

Another parent appreciated the e-books’ prompts. “Actually.. [I liked the e-book] because I don’t know what questions to ask sometimes and the iPad showed what to repeat and say,” said a mother of a five-year old boy.

NEXT STEPS

For this “quick study,” which researchers recognize is limited by the small number of those surveyed, the intent is to help guide more comprehensive research in the future.

“This whole explosion of e-books has been great, and we love seeing what’s happening with the innovation, but now it’s time to start thinking more purposefully and thoughtfully into what goes into the creation of an e-book,” Chiong said.

Researchers advise that e-book designers be discriminating about the types of features they add to enhanced e-books, “especially when those features do not directly relate to the story,” the study states. Parents should also be able to have more control over settings to features so they can tailor the reading experience to their own needs.

Researchers believe a similar study should be done with a larger and more representative sample of participants and books, and should examine what types, combinations, and placement of e-book features help or hinder learning and conversation, and should explore how different populations (e.g., lower income families, non-native English speaking families) use them.

Worldreader

We often talk about the power of the Internet to spread knowledge and information globally, to make digital content accessible and affordable. But as we’re also often caught up in the “latest and greatest” gadgetry, sometimes we overlook that broad promise of global education and accessibility.

Such is the case, one might argue, with the news last week from Common Sense Media about the so-called “app gap” — the disparity between children in low-income and higher income families and their access to mobile applications.

There’s little denying that the popularity of mobile devices — Androids and iPhones and tablets — has afforded a concurrent explosion in exciting new educational apps. The touchscreen screens, the accelerometers, the size, and the portability of these devices has enabled whole new genres of software and of imaginative and educational gameplay.

But if we focus on the “app gap” — those who have iPads and those who do not — are we ignoring or obscuring other aspects of the digital divide? Are we overlooking the potential for widespread dissemination of and access to information by rushing to prioritize that information bundled in the shiniest new package?

While many schools in the U.S. are rushing to embrace iPads, other types of e-readers haven’t been widely adopted — even though they cost less and display digital textbooks, which is one of the rationales for transitioning from print books to tablets. But a non-profit organization called Worldreader is demonstrating how utterly transformative e-readers can actually be, even without apps and videos.

Worldreader distributes Kindle devices to students in sub-Saharan Africa. The devices are pre-loaded with e-books — some 63,000 e-books all told have been distributed through the program (including the recent addition to the Worldreader catalog of several of the best-known titles by children’s author Roald Dahl).

The e-readers offer a huge advantage over their printed counterparts. There’s the ability to put an entire library onto one device. A child can be given the e-reader at school and that device can be circulated throughout her or his family or village. There’s the ability to distribute those devices to the most remote villages without additional shipping costs of thousands of titles. Plus, the cost of e-readers continue to fall. Furthermore, there are thousands upon thousands of titles available for free.

While e-readers don’t have all the apps and features of tablets, they do contain some. They all include dictionaries. They often have 3G or WiFi capabilities. They have Web browsers. And they allow for the subscription to other news forms — magazines, newspapers, and newsletters for example. These devices also tend to have extraordinarily good battery life, which is necessary in regions that don’t have reliable electricity.

Literacy is one of the most important drivers of economic growth. Rather than concern over the “app gap” — over who has access to iPads and who doesn’t — Worldreader highlights how the discussions around access to the Internet and to digital content still needs to address some of the more fundamental “haves and have-nots.”

Flickr: tapiolankirjasto

Print books will always have a place in our lives, but e-books can come in handy, too.

By Jenny Shank

When Amazon first introduced the Kindle in 2007, I had no desire to own one. I was happy with regular papery books. When the iPad went on sale in 2010, it was harder for me to resist.

I’ve been using Macs, and Macs only, since I was a 6-year-old trying to ford a river in the game Oregon Trail on my school’s Apple II. I bought an iPad within a few months of its release, and I find it as loveable and gee-whiz-cool as every other Apple product has been. Still, old habits die hard. When I hit the couch at the end of the day to read, it’s usually with an old-fashioned book.

E-books have nothing on regular books for reading in the bathtub, in the rain while you’re pushing your kid on the playground swing, and with your toddler in the rocking chair so he can learn to use his chubby fingers to turn the page, not to mention enjoy books with pop-ups, cut-outs, and other surprises. Regular books autographed by a favorite author make a perfect souvenir of an enjoyable

night out at the bookstore. I write all over my books, make notes in the margins, and star and underline things. Ideas for my own writing come to me while I’m reading, and I scrawl these in the back blank pages of novels. Still, I have to admit that e-books are better than paper books in some situations. Here are five reasons I’ve switched to e-books, some of the time:

1. E-BOOKS ARE HELPFUL TO PARENTS.

Becoming a parent did not decrease my desire to read, but it did reduce the amount of time available for reading. I have to be creative about sneaking in reading, and the iPad has helped on several occasions. For example, on a recent vacation, my husband and two kids and I were staying together in one hotel room, and the only way to get the kids to go to bed at a reasonable hour was to turn all the lights out at nine, leaving us all in the dark. I happily spent the time reading on the iPad, whose subtle glow didn’t bother the kids. I’ve tried reading with regular books and book lights or flashlights in similar situations in the past, but the lights never illuminate the book well enough, and I’m always dropping, losing or breaking them. Plus, the sensation of whooshing the page away with a swipe of a finger across the iPad is great fun, and it’s silent, a bonus when the kids are asleep.

My friend Jennifer Sullivan, who is a mother of twins, tells me that there’s only one way for a book-loving mom to cope with endless bouts of nursing two kids at once — reading on a Kindle. It has only one button to press, so it works better than turning pages when your arms are full.

2. IT’S EASIER TO SEARCH AN E-BOOK.

I’ve been a book reviewer for a number of newspapers and websites for more than a decade, and I always use lots of quotes from the book. Sometimes I can’t find the quote I want, no matter how many times I flip through the review copy, looking for that pencil mark I made. But if I can remember even a word or two from the quote, I can find the passage instantly in an e-book or through Amazon’s “Search Inside This Book” feature.

My husband has been trying to read my novel on his iPad, but he’s making slow progress because he says it’s too long and there are too many characters. (He’s a minimalist; I’m a maximalist: There you have it.) Whenever he comes across a character name that he can’t remember, he searches for the first time the character was introduced to refresh his memory.

3. SOME APPS ARE IRRESISTIBLE

Usually the only magic I want from a book is the kind I conjure in my own mind when I am transported by an incredible story. But some designers are coming up with fascinating reading apps. My favorite is the The New Yorker app for the iPad, which comes free with a magazine subscription. On the iPad, I enjoy reading those front parts of The New Yorker that appear in please-don’t-read-me small print in the magazine. I don’t feel guilty when I skip parts, which for some reason I do with the magazine. (Is this a Catholic thing?) When you come to a cartoon in the app, you can go ahead and gorge on all the cartoons in a row first, which is what I like to do with the magazine anyway. Also, seeing The New Yorker issues that I haven’t read yet arrayed on the iPad does not induce the flurry of panic, shame, and existential dread that seeing the decaying pile of printed New Yorkers in the corner of my living room does. I try not to visit that corner.

4. IT’S EASIER TO FIND FOREIGN-LANGUAGE BOOKS

My husband has been raising our kids to speak French, his mother language, and one of the challenges of this is finding plenty of books and DVDs for them to enjoy. We have a sizable collection, but still, the kids get bored. Often my daughter would rather read the new books in English that we checked out from the library than the same old books in French. There are lots of Spanish language materials available here in Colorado, but for any other language, it’s tricky. The library only has a few dozen books in French that we’ve checked out so often the kids have them memorized. Ordering books from France is expensive, and carting them home after we visit family there is difficult.

Recently, my husband discovered a trove of children’s story e-books in French from GoodBye Paper Éditions. They are fun, interactive stories that include games, so my daughter doesn’t drag her feet anymore when it’s French story time. (Our favorite: “Marcel, le cochon qui avait peur de se salir” — that’s, “Marcel, the Pig Afraid of Getting Himself Dirty.”)

5. EASIER TO KEEP NEAT

Jenny Shank

I’ve been using these books you see piled around my computer to write book reviews, research author interviews and an anthology I’m helping with, and study for the writing class I teach. I can tell by the publication dates of the lower strata that some of these books have been on my desk since February. I need to move them somewhere — but there is no remaining bookshelf space. I need to buy a new bookshelf, which I’ve learned over the years only inevitably leads me to buying another bookshelf.

When former Apple CEO Steve Jobs died, my husband showed me a photo of Jobs in his 20s, sitting in a room furnished only with a lamp, a stereo, and a cup of tea. “This is how we should live,” my husband said.

In my case, it would have to be the lamp, the tea, the stereo, and a couple thousand books. I love books. I will never stop bringing them into the house, but yeah, there are some books that I maybe don’t need to own a printed copy of.

Jenny Shank is the author of the novel “The Ringer” (The Permanent Press, 2011). The Ringer was a finalist for the Reading the West Book Awards, sponsored by the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association, and is a Tattered Cover Book Store Summer Reading 2011 selection.

This story was originally published by PBS MediaShift, covering the intersection of media and technology. Follow @PBSMediaShift for Twitter updates, or join us on Facebook. Read more in the Kids & Media series on MediaShift.

The four kid characters in Booksurfers — Ryan, Jake, Becca and Harriet — use a digital gadget called The Nautilus in order to”jump into” classic adventure stories in order to steal fictional artifacts. The evil Dr. Crookshanks compels them to do so, and he’s taken their parents hostage in order to force the kids’ cooperation.

For those familiar with Mary Pope Osborne’s popular Magic Tree House series, the notion of traveling back in time or into magic lands may sound quite familiar, and as I read through one of the two available titles — The Wonderful Wizard of Oz — I was reminded of how much my son loved that series when he was first learning to read chapter books.

That’s the aim, in part, of the Booksurfers series: pique children’s interest in reading, and specifically in reading classic works of fiction (the two available titles so far are The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Treasure Island).

It isn’t simply that the children in Booksurfers “jump into” these familiar classic novels and interact with characters from them. The e-books actually contain a number of passages that are lifted out of the earlier novels. These are hyperlinked, and when you click on the pages in your Kindle, you jump to that passage in the original novel. The full copy of Treasure Island and The Wizard of Oz is included in the download of the e-book (Booksurfers uses public domain works).

“Harnessing the functionality of Kindle enables us to create the interactivity which we hope will draw young readers into classic books in a way which is fun, intuitive and user-friendly,” said Zoe Watkins, creative director of the series publisher FourteenFiftyFour,

But will this get more kids reading more of the classics?

Last year, Scholastic released a report stating that kids said they’d read more if they had an e-reader and access to digital books. In fact, 57% of kids age nine to 17 surveyed said they were interested in reading via e-books. And one-third said they’d read more for fun if they had more access to books on an electronic device. This response cut across demographics and included kids who read daily, once or so a week, and even those who ready rarely. In that case,  Booksurfers, with its digital-only distribution, may find a way to increase interest in not only its own titles but in some of the classics.

On a personal note, as I read through The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, I actually found the hyperlinks a little jarring. Although I’m accustomed to this type of reading and linking on the Web and in blog posts, it still feels a little out-of-place in a novel. I’m not sure my brain can easily flip between stories this way. That said, I was reminded of how wonderful Frank L. Baum’s books are, how different the novel is from the Hollywood film — and if that experience makes a young reader attracted to the novels in either Baum’s or Booksurfers’ catalog, then it’s good news. Plus, a young reader’s experience is sure to be different than my own, especially as e-readers increasingly become our primary source for reading.

Booksurfers plans to release more titles this year, including Robin Hood and A Christmas Carol. The company has also indicated that it may pursue print versions, but only if they can find the right print publishing partner to maintain that hyperlink functionality in paper form.

Flickr:CarbonNYC

Would you trade your textbooks for e-books, asks the New York Times Learning Network of students 13 years or older.

The responses are all over the map depending on whether they’re reading for school or for pleasure. Anecdotal quotes like those below are predominantly against e-readers, from what seems to be kids who haven’t had much experience with the gadgets.

As I’ve said before about college students preferring print over digital, I think it goes back to a person’s formative experience when it comes to reading. If you grew up reading print books, which most of us have, we’ll tend to stick to what we know unless we’re early adopters of new technologies. A print book only requires opening, reading, and bookmarking with a folded edge. E-readers have a learning curve that requires some time to adjust. But kids learning to read today on e-readers and educational apps will have a different answer to this question than those below.

Here are those who prefer to stick to print:

• “I like the idea of using an iPad, but I think kids will find a way to play around with it and they won’t focus on their work. E-books will change education, but in some ways for the worse.”

• “Digital books can be helpful at times, but they also hurt your eyes after awhile, like looking at a computer screen too long. I’d rather be turning the pages and using sticky notes to make notes, none of which you can do on a digital book.”

• “Not many people like using computers too much and I’m one of them.”

• “Textbooks are a good idea to have on digitally but not leisure reading books. Textbooks in our school are low as it is in numbers, so we read on the screen. That is the only time that I will accept a digital book.”

• “Too many things could go wrong with it. Like dead batteries, or something wrong inside of it. I think I will stick with my paper books. Like in a way I would like to use an iPad, but I do not know how well that would end up.”

• “If it was a book I wanted to read for leisure, I would prefer a hard copy.”

• “Staring at a book for hours probably isn’t that good either, but a screen is always worse. I also feel like I retain less information if I’m reading from an online textbook. It’s just kind of distracting.”

• “Personally, I do not own any e-books or machines that convert paper books to online versions. When I read textbook assignments online, I tend to associate it with social networking sites like Facebook or even long emails.”

Responses from those open to the idea:

• “I think if I could hear it, and watch the examples given on a screen, that it would be a lot better. I think it would be better for my learning ability. and it might make things easier to learn by.”

• “I would actually want to try the digital version because since kindergarten I have always had the printed books. I know it will not be something that I am used to but I would like to try it anyway.”

• “That would be much easier to keep up with. Also it wouldn’t get ripped or anything like paper books do.”

• “If I do read a textbook, yeah, it’d be cool for all of them to be in one little device that was lighter and smaller. It’d also be nice if I could hook it up to headphones and it’d read it to me, I might actually be able to learn.”

Will Hutton

For all this talk of iPads and Kindles and e-readers and digital textbooks, apparently college students aren’t ready to give up their back-breaking tomes just yet.

At least that’s what yesterday’s New York Times article indicates. Despite the fact that in most cases, print books are more expensive, college kids surveyed in two studies said they “prefer a bound book to a digital one.”

“Students grew up learning from print books,” said Nicole Allen, the textbooks campaign director for the research groups, “so as they transition to higher education, it’s not surprising that they carry a preference for a format that they are most accustomed to.”

And I think that’s the revelatory part of the quote: “grew up learning from print books.” When today’s college kids began reading, say around 1998 (assuming they’re 18 years old now and were 6 when they started reading), there were no iPads or Kindles or Nooks. We only had books, brick-and-mortar bookstores, and libraries.

Fast forward 12 years. Future college-bound children like mine (crossing fingers), are seeing their parents reading on Kindles and iPads and other e-readers. And not just a few of us here and there: The Wall Street Journal reports that “11 million Americans are expected to own at least one digital reading gadget” this year. Kids and parents are using the gadgets for games and watching YouTube, but also for reading.

When you consider this in a timeline, the rise of digital textbooks in higher education seems inevitable. Colleges are enticing students with free iPads. New products are flooding the market regularly. University systems are piloting new programs with renting digital textbooks. And experts say the iPad and its ilk can be the game-changer in this realm.

But as with adapting to any new technology, the learning curve can be steep, and the ease and comfort with which users navigate college texts is — at this point –  found in bound books. Who can blame a college student for not wanting to surrender the comfort of flipping through pages, writing notes in the margin, highlighting text and easily finding it again? College texts are essential to succeeding in school, and college students might not want to fiddle around with the newest software.

My point is this: We are in the midst of a monumental shift in the way we learn. By the time today’s grade-schoolers start packing for college, the publishing market will have been turned on its ear. New gadgets will replace today’s shiny toys and open-source texts will have evolved to something completely different. Who knows what that will be, but I think it’s safe to say their comfort level with those changes will be higher than today’s college students.