Changes in technology are changing the way literature is accessed, understood and created. Increasing internet connectivity and usage of personal devices is increasing access and use of digital literature (Picton, 2014, p.4). Ebooks are one form of digital literature used.
Two of the ebooks reviewed are picture books, therefore a rubric by McGeehan, Chambers & Nowakowski (2018, Appendix A) for assessing elements of digital picture books has been used. These are considered under the heading ‘affordances of digital features’ in the reviews and include:
- Appropriate presentation of the text for digital format
- Use of features to move text past print
- Alignment of supplementary features with the text
- Features support concepts of print (text moves left to right, top to bottom etc)
- Features support readers comprehension and new vocabulary
The ebooks will also be assessed on availability, classification of ebook, appearance, functionality, and if applicable literacy features.
E-book – Water Can Be by Laura Purdie Salas.
Availability
I accessed this ebook using my local library membership via the Libby app for Apple and Android devices and Overdrive on computers. Overdrive is available to schools via the student app Sora (Overdrive, n.d) for schools that hold a subscription to Overdrive.
Classification of ebook
Despite this book being published in 2014, according to Yokota & Teale’s (2014, p.576) categories of digital picture books it would fall into one of the earliest types of ebook categories. It is a scanned version of the print book and contains the same cover, endpapers, font etc as the print version. This has been categorised as an ebook as it is available in digital form.
Appearance
The illustrations are appealing, support the text meaning and lose no quality in being converted to digital format. The images are able to be made larger by zooming out on the screen. The digital features do not detract from the book as the page enlarges and the digital features disappear from the screen when the book is being read.
Functionality
The ebook does contain basic features found in ebooks such as the ability to change the brightness of the screen from bright to sepia or dark (black background screen). This is beneficial to readers who may experience difficulties with light sensitivity. By clicking on ‘recent places’ in the menu, the reader (or teacher) can see the current location in the text, number of times the narration was paused, which page the reader came from and the number of minutes until the end of the book. It also shows the total time spent reading and percentage of the book read. This provides useful data on the reading experience which may indicate the difficulty of text for the reader and their level of engagement.
Other features including search, highlighting and bookmarking appear in a ribbon at the top of the screen. The search function works well, even though the pages on screen present as a digital copy of the physical book. Pages can be bookmarked, allowing for easy access to important pages. Unlike other ebooks, the text is unable to be highlighted which can hamper teachers or students drawing attention to certain sections.
Navigation is assisted by the portrayal of a slider bar, showing how far through the text the narration is. There is the ability to pause or scroll to a page number. It also shows how many pages there are before and after the current page. This is important as it allows the reader to orient themselves as they would in a printed book and not get lost in the digital text, such as flipping pages backwards (Lamb, 2011, p.14). Students must have some knowledge of digital literacy with regards to the features of functions on the screen (Kucirkova, Littleton & Cremin, 2017, p.73). In this case, readers need to know how to swipe the screen to access the next page and how to use two fingers to enlarge the screen and zoom in on the illustrations.
Affordances of digital features
- Appropriate presentation of the text for digital format – digital features are easily found, however, they are not accessible once the book is being ‘read’ until the top corner of the screen is tapped. This may be confusing for some readers.
- Use of features to move text past print – it has no extra features, it is the same as reading print on a page.
- Alignment of supplementary features with the text –no supplementary features available.
- Features support concepts of print – text appearance is of a reasonable size and easily read.
- Features support readers comprehension and new vocabulary – there are no digital features that support readers. Although there are no definition hotspots in the book, the glossary at the back of the book supports the reader.
Literacy features
This is a non-fiction book presented in a poetic form. Although the text is limited (only two words per page on most pages) the illustrations support the text well to help the reader add meaning. The contents at the back of the book also supports the reader with a glossary, information and facts (such as 2/3 of the Earth’s surface is water) about the function of water depicted on each page in the story. There is also a suggested reading list of books for further investigations about water. The literacy features of the book make it an acceptable digital book, despite lacking many digital features.
Overall, this is a basic form of ebook. Greater use of digital features such as narration and hotspots could improve the reading experience. By digitising the print book the publishers have made it more widely accessible (Yokota & Teale, 2014, p.578). The benefits of providing this book as an ebook also allows a whole class to access the book at the same time and work at their own pace in reading the book, which they could not do with one print book.
Enhanced E-book – I don’t want curly hair! by Laura Ellen Anderson
Availability
The ebook is available via the Libby or Sora app.
Classification of ebook
This book is a hybrid of an ebook which is a scan of the print book and an ebook that transforms the book with features unique to the digital world (Yokota & Teale, 2014, p.576). It contains the same cover, endpapers, font etc as the print version whilst containing features of the digital world such as narration and text highlighting.
Functionality
As it is on the same platform as the ebook reviewed above it contains the same access and navigation features, however, frustratingly, not all appear to be operable with this book. Whilst there was a search function it did not work. A search for ‘hair’ produced no matches, despite it appearing many times in the story. The features are also limited in that they can’t be accessed once the narration has commenced.
There were some difficulties loading two of the audio pages. The pages wouldn’t load the audio and the reader needed to swipe to the next page where the audio began again. Frequently a page would freeze at the beginning and the reader needed to go back a page and manually swipe to the new page again. Some letters were missing from the text on the page that the audio would not load, this made it difficult for the reader to decode the text. In other parts of the book the formatting of the text makes reading difficult as the text overlays itself. These difficulties were frustrating and interrupted the reading process.
Affordances of digital features
- Appropriate presentation of the text for digital format – sound effects and music are related to the text. There is enhancement through the accompaniment of musical instruments and sounds (such as laughing), which add to the atmosphere of the story. Although the noises are presented alongside the narration, they are not overly loud and do not detract from the storyline.
- Use of features to move text past print – there is a use of narration which helps to convey the books humour to students. The use of narration also highlights the rhythm and rhyme of the story. The speed of the narrative is good – not too quick, expressive but only available in an English accent. It is beneficial to multilingual learning if the language could be changed (Yokota & Teale, 2014, p.584). The narrator is a famous children’s television presenter and comedian – Justin Fletcher. Whilst the narration is expressive and by a well-known personality, it doesn’t seem to suit the story. The narrator’s voice is important to the story’s characters (Yokota & Teale, 2014, p.580). The story is about a girl and a female sounding narration would have suited the character better and made the character more believable. It would also be beneficial if the text size could be changed. Changing to a larger font size has proven beneficial to struggling readers (Picton, 2014, p.13).
- Alignment of supplementary features with the text –no supplementary features available.
- Features support concepts of print – individual text is highlighted as it is read aloud and is in a different colour (blue), highlights from left to right and top to bottom.
- Features support readers comprehension and new vocabulary – there are no digital features that support readers. The use of hotspots can enhance the reading event by giving definitions of more complex words (McGeehan, Chambers & Nowakowski, 2018, p.63). The use of a dictionary would assist students in making meaning, for example the word ‘frazzled’ is used in the narrative and there is a picture of a girl looking angrily in a mirror. An explanation hotspot would have further clarified the meaning taking a digital affordance of what a print book couldn’t do.
There are several features to consider when choosing a narrated e-book (Bates, Klein, Schubert, McGee, Anderson, Dorn, McClure & Huber Ross, 2016, p.405). This book has several of the features including ability to read by self and ‘turn’ pages, narration, ability to replay narration and autoplay for narration and page turning.
This is an entertaining book for students with its use of rhyme and whimsical pictures. The functions of narration and text highlighting assist the reading process. The functionality issues effected the enjoyment and flow of the story. If these issues were fixed this book could be an ideal book for modelling rhyme and fluency to students.
Interactive book – Clio’s cosmic quest by Wonderscope
Availability
Available as a free app for iphone and ipad in the Apple apps store. Clio’s cosmic quest is a free book in the Wonderscope app. Other interactive stories are offered in the app for 7.99 AUD each.
Classification of ebook
This would fit into the category of the latest development of ebooks – transforming picture books to include digitally unique features (Yokota & Teale, 2014, p.579) including animation, sound and augmented reality.
Appearance
Upon beginning the story the user chooses a physical space for the story to take place. An augmented reality mystical galaxy then opens and the user is introduced to the main character ‘Clio’. Clio and the other characters are presented in three-dimensional forms who speak to the reader. Using augmented reality helps to engage the reader by the character entering the reader’s space and speaking with them. The space zooms in and out as the characters (and reader) travel through the galaxy. This movement enhances the reader’s experience within the story (Lamb, 2011, p.17).
Functionality
The app is easy to use, starting with a character greeting the user and instructing them on how to set up their camera and microphone in order to participate in the story. The story also takes advantage of haptics to include the user in the story, such as tapping on the gas particles in the story and the phone vibrating at times when the character moves. However, whilst this is entertaining and relates to the story it can distract from the storyline. These kind of features do not support the reader’s comprehension process (McGeehan, Chambers & Nowakowski, 2018, p.59) or offer support to a user with reading difficulties (Lamb, 2011, p.17).
However, the user is unable to control the flow of the narrative with no option to repeat a section. Also, if the reader is unsure of the words in their script, there is no option to hear words pronounced. There is an option to touch an arrow to move onto the next part of the story but then the flow of the story is interrupted as the reader’s part disappears. The lack of these features may impede a student’s understanding and comprehension.
By being interactive with the character Clio, students are able to gain empathy for her situation of being bullied by another star and support her by helping Clio in her quest. There is the possibility of readers losing the main characters in the galaxy created, however, the narration and reader text continues so the story still flows.
Affordances of digital features
- Appropriate presentation of the text for digital format – text follows basic reading concepts being placed at the bottom of the images, the text size fit well within the phone’s screen, digital features are found easily.
- Use of features to move text past print – there is use of narration, however, it does not read a text. The animations used support the text meaning (Bates, Klein, Schubert, McGee, Anderson, Dorn, McClure & Huber Ross, 2016, p.404) by showing elements of space that may be difficult for students to otherwise understand.
- Alignment of supplementary features with the text – at the end of the story Clio and the other particles are turned into the Sun. A map of the solar system is then presented where students can tap on the planets to discover more information about them.
- Features support concepts of print – individual text is highlighted word by word in blue for the user to read. It highlights from left to right, top to bottom before disappearing like cosmic dust. Highlighting of text in ‘read aloud’ mode is an important element for literacy development of young children (Yokota & Teale, 2014, p.583).
- Features support readers comprehension and new vocabulary – there are no digital features that support readers such as tapping on objects (for example the super nova) to get written labels of the objects or provide links to them.
Clio’s cosmic quest is a fun and engaging interactive narrative with the themes of inclusion and cooperation. It also contains informative elements about the solar system and how a star is formed. The interactive book takes advantage of digital features such as augmented reality, voice and haptics. Further use of digital features such as vocabulary hotspots and ability to rewind would improve the reading experience. Whilst some of the interactive features can be distracting, overall the digital features add to elevate the reading experience. They involve the reader and when the reader is engaged, they comprehend more (Frye, 2013). As a result of the animations and digital features this book could be useful for engaging reluctant or struggling readers.
References:
Anderson, L. (2017). I don’t want curly hair! Bloomsbury Children’s Books.
Bates, C. C., Klein, A., Schubert, B., McGee, L., Anderson, N., Dorn, L., McClure, E., & Ross, R. H. (2017). E-Books and E-Book Apps: Considerations for Beginning Readers. Reading Teacher, 70(4), 401–411.
Frye, S. (2013, July 19). Interactive eBooks and Reading Comprehension – I’ll Meet You There (a guest post by Sheila Frye). Nosy Crow. https://nosycrow.com/blog/interactive-ebooks-and-reading-comprehension-i-ll-meet-you-there-a-guest-post-by-sheila-frye/
Kucirkova, N., Littleton, K. & Cremin, T. (2017). Young children’s reading for pleasure with digital books: six key facets of engagement. Cambridge Journal of Education, 47(1), 67-84. https://doi.org/10.1080/0305764X.2015.1118441
Lamb, A. (2011). Reading redefined for a transmedia universe. Learning and leading with technology, 39(3), 12-17.
McGeehan, C., Chambers, S., & Nowakowski, J. (2018). Just Because It’s Digital, Doesn’t Mean It’s Good: Evaluating Digital Picture Books. Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education, 34(2), 58–70. https://doi.org/10.1080/21532974.2017.1399488
Picton, I. (2014). The impact of ebooks on the reading motivation and reading skills of children and young people. National Literacy Trust. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED560635
Purdie Salas, L. (2014). Water Can Be. Millbrook Press TM.
Wonderscope (n.d). Clio’s cosmic quest (Version 278) [mobile app]. Apple app store.
Yokota, J., & Teale, W. H. (2014). Picture Books and the Digital World. Reading Teacher, 67(8), 577–585. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1262