Digital resources are the current most popular method for children to access information. The activity I have chosen is analyzing and evaluating a website designed for children. The website I chose to review was Storyline Online, a website that presents story time videos with animation and activity booklets as supplementary material.

This website review allowed me to explore the features and effectiveness of digital resources for children. My choice of website was influenced by the quality of it’s content, appropriateness for the audience it is targeted at and the popularity of it’s features. In an electronic media survey study of aged 8-12 children’s usage of websites on the internet Youtube proved to be the most popular (Blackwell et al, 2014, p.6). I believed that a website that produced videos would be appealing to young children and Storyline Online featured videos that were digital resources for improving young children’s literacy. In the beginning of my research, I believed that picture books would only be presented as an electronic book. However, this preconception was challenged as Storyline Online aimed to simulate a story time like experience where audio and visual elements are used for the main form of storytelling.

There was a significant emphasis placed on the accessibility aspects of the website as I believed that the targeted audience of this website would be young children, who will have too limited skills to navigate complex websites. I could have improved my analysis on the format of electronic picture books as my review focused heavily on the usability and effectiveness of the website design instead. From Barnyak & Mcnelly‘s study of children and electronic books, the aspects that I should have examined critically in more detail should have been “features that support their reading development” (Barnyak & Mcnelly, 2016, p. 529) such as the animation of the videos, the balance between audio and visual elements of the video. Additionally, I did not analyse whether the selection of picture books in the collection were suitable and appealing for their targeted age group. One other aspect that I did not consider enough was the comparison of digital picture books with physical for children.

My knowledge in digital resources for children could be improved in the future by understanding the elements that make a digital book appealing to children.