The article is based on the University of Szeged With Art for Education Research Group’s findings
There is a constant debate about whether it is a good idea to give a child a smartphone or a tablet. Once the electronic device is already allowed, the conflict further intensifies: how much time, when and what the kids can consume? Most parents agree that a tablet would make a child and of course the parents’ life easier during a long drive or in the doctor’s office. Well-chosen, educational and entertaining apps can greatly boost the development of our little ones. BOOKR Kids offers all of this in one application.
Now, an empirical university study shows that BOOKR Kids’ Library supports reading comprehension and literacy learning development. Based on the University of Szeged (#100 QS world university rankings) With Art for Education Research Group’s findings, the BOOKR Kids interactive e-books also enhance a child’s ability to entertain and engage him or herself.
BOOKR Kids’ pedagogical system is based on the following principles
»Differentiation
The app allows several different ways of organizing teaching and learning techniques (paired work, small group work, cooperative learning organizing procedures).
»Collaboration
The development extends the teacher-student collaboration regarding the teacher-learner-parent forums.
»Enhancing opportunities
BOOKR Kids is capable of alleviating socio-economic, socio-cultural disadvantages in the learning community.
»Unity of concretes and abstractions
The development of BOOKR Kids creates an experience during each stage of spelling, text-processing and language skills developer lessons and makes the abstraction classes fun and activity-oriented for children, which maximizes learning outcomes based on psychological development.
BOOKR Kids’ mobile and tablet application is a digital library of interactive storyboards. The interactive stories are digital versions of already existing printed books that are part of the educational canon. Every BOOKR Kids’ story is richly animated, including an audiobook element with spoken narration as well as skill-developing games that support speech comprehension. Listening to and reading books, based on the BOOKR Kids’ interactive stories, are important methods of pronunciation, recognition and automation of voice-letter connection; reading technique development and the foundation of spelling. The research was conducted among nursery, normal and hearing impaired children, as well as the teachers mediating the stories. The study shows that BOOKR Kids’ users are able to concentrate on the stories for long spans of time, and the new features–linguistic, visual, communicative and performative–prompt results in the educational process as well as in the user’s ability to engage.
The application ensures that children don’t break away from classical story-telling and reading, but enhances them by introducing the magical world of tales into the digital space. The debate mentioned in the beginning of this post might be resolved by saying: no matter what, just read!