Kinderen willen e-boeken

Tenminste, dat zou moeten blijken uit een enquête onder ongeveer 2000 6- tot 17-jarigen (en hun ouders) in opdracht van de grote Amerikaanse uitgeverij Scholastic, waarover in New York Times 29-09-2010 een bericht te vinden was.
E-boeken graag - maar tweederde wil ook graag gewone boeken houden. Ik citeer:

' Many children want to read books on digital devices and would read for fun more frequently if they could obtain e-books. But even if they had that access, two-thirds of them would not want to give up their traditional print books. '


Het stuk riep reacties op. Ik citeer die van auteur/illustrator Dave Horowitz, geplaatst op 29 september:


' Of course kids are drawn to flashy new toys like e-readers, but as the author of this article states, these devices are in essence tools. Since kids are still learning to read, one wonders if they are really the best tool for the job.

Is the kindergarten teacher of the future going to hold up a Kindle™ in front of a room full of squirming children? Is a mother going to say, "okay, Johnny, we will upload one more story and then it's off to bed?"

I hope not; can you imagine Green Eggs and Ham without the page turns?

dave horowitz
author/illustrator

p.s. Why is the title of this article, Children Cite Appeal of Digital Reading, when in the very first paragraph it states that two thirds of children would NOT want to give up their real books? '

En dan is er nog een lange, serieuze en volgens mij behartenswaardige reactie van ene pstgrandy. (Waarom zijn mensen toch zo bang om met naam en toenaam te reageren?)

Ik citeer de eerste vier alinea's:

' This is a very questionable survey. I am a highly experience social scientist and survey reseacher. I also study social trends. The reason I challenge these findings that children say they would read more if they could read on digital devices is that this is a claim, an attitude, rather than actual observed or documented behavior. One cannot discount too much the trendiness/fad effect on the answers of the children. Children are notorious for very rapidly chasing after the latest fad or trend, far more so than adults. Children are magnetically drawn to own, to have, to be seen with the latest, coolest look or thing. Being part of what is happening, as well as peer group membership along with peer pressure to be "with it" impels kids to embrace the new and as I said, the cool, the in.

It is understandable why kids would be attracted to things like video games and social networking sites. It is understandable how graphically based devices like the iPad which allow direct screen based control of screen objects would be highly appealing. I can even see the appeal of 3D for kids.

But I am a bit more skeptical about the fundamental and longer term power of substituting digital text for printed text. There is just not the kind of unique selling proposition difference that is provided by all the other media and devices previously mentioned. While the eReaders may provide a "cool" way to bring along text, the text itself is still text, instead of printed text, electronically generated text. There is a convenience factor with an electronic reader that can generate an infinite number of pages from a slim device, but convenience alone does not seem like a game changer here.

I seriously doubt that childen who had only marginal interest in reading say novels or text books suddenly will become serious readers because they now can read the same text on an lcd or even led screen. '


Waar blijft de poetry app?