I think they’ll be around a long time. I also think there is no stopping the future. That future includes e-books. It will also include generations who have no ties to print books.
A recent article in the Memphis, Tennessee, The Commercial Appeal shows a picture of a family reading. The five-year-old is reading a video book. The three-year-old is reading, with his father, another such book. These young kids are hearing stories and watching animated characters on their iPods. These kinds of books are called Moving Picture Books.
Created by a Knoxville company, they are not cartoons or text-only "ebooks," but stories, classic and new, read to children in the author's words and illustrated with imaginatively drawn moving figures, music and sound effects.These Moving Picture Books can be downloaded to a computer, iPhones, iPods, or the iPod Touch. They can be bought as DVDs or memory cards for SmartPhones. For the classroom, they can be displayed on a large, digital smartboard.
The generation that grows primarily up without print books is coming.
Oh dear, digi-books sound so fleeting. How will these adults be able to look at a dog-eared copy of the Velveteen Rabbit and remember the comfort it gave?
ReplyDeleteReading is reading. I want an I-Pad. Books will never go away.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid there will be a generation of readers who wonder how people read static pages with no 3D videos, digital author interaction, sound, search function, highlighting, bookmarking and smartboarding. Hopefully, that will be long after I'm dead, and even when that comes about, there will still be print books available.
ReplyDeleteSay it ain't so...although if it helps promote literacy, so be it. (But that won't be known for years.) Can't imagine the wee ones not being able to snuggle up with a fav book at bedtime.
ReplyDeleteDon't things seem to be changing so rapidly?
ReplyDeleteI think that's so sad - kids don't have to use their minds/imaginations nearly as much with interactive books.
ReplyDeleteI always found it touching JeanLuc Piccard read from a print book out there in space. On the other hand, these moving picture books are exciting to me. Perhaps kids will find joy in reading instead of video games. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
ReplyDeleteEverything changes. When I was little, kids did chores then played outside. Now kids play video games and exercise with the Wii. I read books while curled up on the floor beside my bed. Kids tomorrow will get lost in multi-media ebooks. Who knows where things go after that.
ReplyDeleteMy kids do just about everything on the smartboard at school now. The times, they are achangin'.
ReplyDeleteElizabeth
Mystery Writing is Murder
Did our parents generation think that listening to "Annie" on the radio would ever disappear? Did we think record albums would end up in the trash? How soon will we have interactive TV (maybe we already do)? As long as "print" medium using characters and phonetics appears somewhere, whether on line or traditional book form, I can manage. I'm just afraid that with children being read to, instead of reading, that they won't learn how. As it is, with all the computer homework these days, how many kids under the age of say, 21, can ever write cursive? And then there is my daughter, who comes home from her smartboard lessons with a headache. What does all this do to our eyes?
ReplyDeleteAnd we worried about the effects of MTV...
ReplyDeleteI teach high school and there are still millions of teenagers out there who love books. They also love technology and the two will meet at times. Tales were once passed down from generation to generation around camp fires. Story telling will go on in one form or another. Perhaps we should think of this as a step back. Instead of reading stories they're being acted out and spoken like our ancestors in the caves. LOL
ReplyDeleteAll very interesting developments. However, I don't know that I'd call these new developments "books" at all. They are a new media, for sure, but I wouldn't even classify them as "books." Maybe they should have their own identity, alongside books.
ReplyDeleteKinda sad. I still have some of my first books, now well over 40 years old. But kids who grow up with 'devices,' what will they keep? Those devices break and become obsolete. It's like people who rely on jpg images on their computer for their family album. What happens in 20 years when there's no computer program that reads jpgs? Same with books on eReaders and such.
ReplyDeleteTechnology is moving so quickly! Life is changing with it - should be interesting to see where we go :)
ReplyDeleteWhen my daughter was home earlier this month, we were talking about kids not learning to write cursive. She said she rarely does - it's easier and faster to print. I still write cursive, but I admit it's not as "pretty" as it used to be. I do so much less writing now that I'm on the computer so much.
ReplyDeleteI think perhaps we should come up with a new name for these new "books" that are multimedia.
Everyone who is interested in this subject might like to read 'The Diamond Age, a victorian girl's primer' by Neal Stephenson. It will blow your mind and it was written quite a number of years ago.
ReplyDeleteSigh, tis true enough. Somehow teaching your kid to love books and reading by having the little tyke hop onto your lap and share a laptop read doesn't quite seem as cozy and warm to The Old Silly as opening a real book and reading to the kid, though.
ReplyDeleteAs long as we can get kids to read, I suppose it doesn't matter whether they're reading from a book or an e-reader. For me, though, a book is easier on my eyes. I think that will be the case with other readers as they age -- they might shift back to printed books then.
ReplyDeleteAnd that makes me wonder if computers and e-readers will cause vision problems for our younger generations (as if we didn't already have enough to worry about).
Helen, you are so right about the young children who will grow up in a whole new learning and reading environment. I recently did a feature story about new technology in our East Texas school rooms - Smart Boards as just one example. I was amazed at how different it is now in a classroom than even when my kids went to school. And a WHOLE lot different from when I went to school with a Number 2 pencil and a blue notebook.
ReplyDeleteMaryann, I recently had the chance to watch high schoolers using a Smart Board in the classroom. I was amazed.
ReplyDeleteAmiable brief and this enter helped me alot in my college assignement. Say thank you you seeking your information.
ReplyDeleteI am now resigned to the fact that digital will soon take over paper. I may not like it, but it is the changing times. Everything evolves sometime, somehow...
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed this post very much. Food for thought is always needed and welcome :)
Books won't disappear totally. Albums are still hanging in, as are CDs.
ReplyDeleteTechnology is great for some stuff, but if this type of book becomes the norm for kids, we may lose a powerful cultivator of imagination.
ReplyDeleteIt's easy to imagine yourself as the lead in a book when there are no pictures.
It's easy to imagine that your interpretation of the story is the right one when you put the emphasis on the words you think need emphasis. (Also builds confidence.)
It's easy to have a relationship with the main character when its just you and her (no author voice-over).
If the new books can offer the magic without compromising the beauty of a novel, then I'll read them with my daughter. If not, we'll stick with the old ones.