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So will this make Brad care more about e-book standards and DRM?
January 10, 2010 | 11:11 am
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By David Rothman
“They will believe the Kindle is the same as a book. And they will all think their parents are hopelessly out of touch.” – Great essay by the NYT’s Brad Stone, headlined The Children of Cyberspace: Old Fogies by Their 20s.
I myself hope Brad does a whole series tracking his two-year-old’s tech progress—and also listens to her on the e-book standards and DRM questions when she finally gets to them.
Speaking of the young, one of the big debates will be over whether their first books should be e-books or paper books. What are you own thoughts, especially if/when the very young see parents reading e-books? Will the children settle for the paper variety? Or want to skip the medium?
I have mixed feelings. Will this-here tactile stuff matter, or should cyber-era children more or less shun the P so they can better focus on the challenges of adapting to E? The technology will not stay still. Networked books as a popular phenomenon are not that far off.
Related: NY Times: Does the brain like e-books?, by Paul Biba.
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Comments:
This doesn’t seem to me all that big a question at the moment. I have a two-year-old, a twelve-year-old and a fourteen-year-old. My wife and I read from Sony Readers and Kindles. My fourteen-year-old daughter is on her second Reader, the first having been broken at school a couple of weeks after she got it for her thirteenth birthday.
Therein lies the lesson: today’s readers are too fragile for the young. My twelve-year-old son is perfectly happy with physical books for the moment, and so we’re going to hold off getting him a reader until he’s clamoring for it.
And here’s the interesting thing about the two-year-old. From the age of about eighteen months, he’s been able to identify my reader as “Daddy’s book” and my wife’s as “Mommy’s book.” He sees no distinction between those and his books. When he picks up one of his books and turns pages, he reports his behaviour as “reading a book.” I have shown him how daddy turns pages and while he’s mildly interested in that, he shows no inclination to pick up my reader other than to bring it to me.
Kids’ books take many forms — large, small, board-books, tactile fuzzy books, pop-up books — for good reason. They need to appeal to a child’s senses, to draw them into that unnatural activity we call reading, to seduce the brain into something it was not evolved for. We spend from age one to whenever it takes trying to install a software patch onto our brains, and we need all sorts of paths to make that installation stick.
Once it’s there, once the brain is hooked on reading, then you can start pulling back on the bells and whistles. I know that my Kindle is much lower resolution and lower contrast than the printed page, but I’m interested enough in what I’m reading to still become immersed in the story.
So, given the fragility of today’s e-ink screens? I wouldn’t get an e-book reader for anyone under thirteen. Once they get better, higher resolution, sturdier, cheaper, more flexible, and filled with rich, rich colour? I’d still probably reserve them for seven and up, depending on the kid.
Love the site. Read it every day.
Until such time as they can make an indestructible eReader, a kid’s first book should be cardboard. Don’t wait until they’re old enough to take care of one to introduce them to a book they can hold themselves!
Bionic reading does not need external electrical power. It does require optical legibility but that is well provided in both print and screen display. And we have long accepted the ambience of radio waves and will certainly accept their propagations via digital translator. So one of the few separators that remains is need for external electrical power and connectivity for screen display.
Is this important for early learning; if learning is dependent on electrical connectivity or independent of electrical connectivity? Probably not important, but from a parental view is it relevant for the early learner to practice manipulation of the physical world or an electronic simulation? Here the print and screen book have some distinctions. And from an instructional perspective is it important to provide physical engagement and physical socialization? Is it important for the early learner to realize that they will exists in an environment of their own construction?
Imprinting (interesting pun) occurs in early learning.
Wait till Fisher Price or Tonka get into the game, I am sure one of them can get as close to indestructible as possible