Academic literature on the topic 'Books to read online for kids'

A review of
 
 Druin, Allison. “What Children Can Teach Us: Developing Digital Libraries for Children with Children.” The Library Quarterly 75.1 (January 2005): 20-41.
 
 Objective – Through use of an interdisciplinary research team that included children, the study aimed to demonstrate that including children in the design of a digital library for children would result in some new approaches that would improve the site’s usability for the target user group.
 
 Design – Case study.
 
 Setting – The research was conducted at University of Maryland over a four-year period and involved an interdisciplinary research team of adult researchers from information studies, computer science, education, art, and psychology as well as seven children aged 7-11. 
 
 Subjects – Seven children participated in the design team over two years; 153 children were observed and interviewed in the design phase; and the resulting new approaches were validated post-launch by analysis of International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL) (http://www.icdlbooks.org) users and usage patterns from November 2002-November 2003 (over 90,000 unique users and 19,000 optional questionnaire respondents).
 
 Method – The study included seven children in the design team for a digital library of international children’s books, which resulted in new approaches to collection development, cataloguing, and the search interface. In the design phase, research methods involving the seven children included brainstorming techniques, “cooperative inquiry”, low-tech prototyping; and lab use studies. The team also undertook observation and interviews of 153 children engaged in searching and selecting books from public library catalogues. In validating the new approaches that resulted from the design research, the team employed web log analysis, a voluntary online survey, and working with children in local schools to understand their use of ICDL. 
 
 Main results – The inclusion of children’s viewpoints in the design stage of the ICDL had an impact in three areas: collection development, metadata, and interface design. 
 
 For collection development, the research showed that kids were interested in books about children from other cultures and other times in history; in animals, both real and make-believe; in books that are sensitive to other cultures; and in books that are in good condition. For metadata, the research showed that children do not distinguish ‘fiction’ and ‘non-fiction’; look for ‘scary stuff’ or ‘gross stuff’; are often seeking books that make them feel a certain way; care about the look of book covers and may recall books by jacket colours; and use free vocabulary like ‘princesses’ and ‘jokes’. For interface design, the children’s involvement led to more search options (utilizing the new categories of metadata that were created), and customization options such as ability to choose different forms and colour palettes for book readers (e.g. the comic book reader, the spiral book reader).
 
 Web log and survey data, as well as lab tests, showed that the innovations resulting from the children’s design input were used. Of the over 90,000 unique users who visited the site in its first year, “genre” and “color” were statistically the fourth and fifth most popular search categories. In lab tests, girls used “color” twice as often as boys, and older boys preferred “genre” while younger children did not pay attention to that category. 
 
 Conclusions – A first conclusion is that children’s input is vital to creating an online library that meets children’s information needs, tendencies and preferences. Also, seven design principles emerged:
 
 1. Children’s input is invaluable and they should be involved in the design of their libraries.
 2. Digital collections for children should consider works both contemporary and historical, and in different languages and representative of different cultures.
 3. A variety of search interfaces are needed and it is particularly important to express categories with visual icons.
 4. Additional metadata can be needed to reflect children’s views of relevant search criteria.
 5. Interfaces should be customizable, such as providing various formats of reader that could themselves be customized in colour.
 6. Tools should be suitable for use from the home and for collaborative use, such as use by a parent with a child.
 7. Innovation requiring high bandwidth must be balanced with a low bandwidth version to assure broadest possible use. 
 
 Lastly, the researchers concluded that more research is merited to assess the broader impact of digital libraries on children as searchers and readers.

Do kids even read books anymore? Don’t kids just read on tablets these days? Why do we still have libraries?Those flip remarks can be heard in many communities these days, from large cities to rural areas. But contemporary librarians should not fear. Recent reports of books being obsolete have been greatly exaggerated. One recent survey found that digital natives still prefer real books to electronic ones on their tablets.

AbstractWhy do we still have books? To answer this question with views based not on the market trend, nor on the popular feeling that print is outdated and irrelevant, but on the American Bar Association's stated mission of Law Libraries to provide resources that enable legal education,1 this article reviews the potential benefits and determents of different types of legal sources using both print and online formats and discusses whether external pressures should outweigh these factors dependent on the audience.

I don't do much public writing, but each month I persuade others to do it in my role as the fiction editor in chief of public Books, a twice-monthly online review that I cofounded with Caitlin Zaloom in 2012. On the first and fifteenth of each month, Public Books publishes six to eight essays about books, nonprint works, the media, the arts, and ideas, written mostly by academics but also by journalists, novelists, activists, and artists. In addition to traditional reviews, we publish roundtables, interviews, visual essays, and Public Picks, our annual lists of best books and films.

<p>Linguistic Intelligence, a person’s ability and sensitivity to interpret the<br />wording, is able to use words effectively, both orally and in writing. Intelligence of this type are identified by Gardner much involved in reading, writing, speaking,<br />and listening. Reading ability is influenced by several factors, including 1) fluency in reading, 2) the ability to hear, 3) the ability to see, 4) environmental influences, 5) emotional factors, and 6) the child’s intelligence. Some of these factors so as to be an influence in the child’s reading ability, therefore, in this case the reading ability of emotion is always enhanced by a variety of ways, as for how that can be achieved are: 1) read children books from birth, 2) encourage children to talk about what has been heard or read, 3) taking children to the bookstore or library, 4) purchase books that attract children, 5) set aside the money to buy books for children, 6) to set aside money to buy books for children, 7) watch movies as well as buy books according to the film, 8) creates a family library at home, 9) exchange of books belonging to the child by his friend, 10) removes inhibitors such as TV and Playstation, 11) to give the reward to enlarge the spirit of reading child, 12) to make the book as a reward for kids, 13) make reading a daily activity, 14) to dramatize the contents of the book that was read to the child, and 15) make their own books.</p>

Books are one of the learning media for children, in this case, specifically, bilingual books were discussed. Bilingual books are used to introduce children to the world of Indonesian and English as well, where the book is used by teachers or parents to read stories for children. Bilingual books are numerous and easily found in various bookstores and online stores. However, the quality of the books is questionable whether the English translation used in the book is correct. In this short article, the author takes the example of 7 children's bilingual story books with 376 sentences in them. The author found that the majority of translations used were word-by-word translation and with complex translation because of the use of sentences that are too long and the vocabulary was not appropriate to use in that context. In fact, story books should be books that were easily read and understood by both those who read and those who listen. With the complexity of these books, it will be difficult for teachers and parents to read and understand, let alone convey them to children. The author suggested publishers and the government to pay more attention to the quality of books by selecting competent writers in their fields.

Online presentations of printed books have led to a complete transformation of publishers’ work, books’ status, and readers’ habits. Through their webpages, publishers invite visitors to create communities, to join social networks, to communicate their likes and dislikes. Everything about the digital presentation of printed books makes manifest the online existence of both readers and books. How, then, can printed books not only compete, but also evolve and become more visible, by means of digital tools and platforms? This article seeks answers to this question by asking: Through their digital tools are publishers’ webpages placing value on literature or on communication? Are digital platforms transforming the objet-livre (the physical object of the book) from a tool into a work of art? And are they transforming visitors from readers into collectors?

Various history books as media to learn the history of Indonesia people are actually quite complete and adequate. However, the interest of younger generation, especially the children, to read the books is quite low. Additionally, the advance of computer technology makes kids and students more interested playing game than reading books. The game trend backgrounds the need for research on the use of computer game application as a medium to learn the history of the building through a game. As the special purpose of this research is to obtain a game application that can be a medium of learning historical buildings. The research is divided into two stages: the first stage is to identify gaming software that can be used as an educational game for historical buildings and to develop the model of 3D gaming applications; the second phase is the application trial and implementation at schools.

Read some chilling statistics, reported in an accurate Roper Organization survey a short time ago. Pollsters telephoned a nationally representative cross section of 1,000 families with kids from three to fourteen years old. Over ninety percent of moms and dads said reading was essential to their boy or girl's success. But of those with a child who could read, only 66 percent were happy with how their youngster was reading. According to age group, these are the numbers regarding parents who thought their child was interested in reading: . . .SCHOOL LEVEL PERCENTAGE Preschool 56% Kindergarten-second grade 59% Third grade-fifth grade 53% Beyond fifth grade 39%. . . At best, therefore, according to parents, six out of ten youngsters in any of the four groups found books stimulating. Of all the families surveyed only forty-four percent said their children read for pleasure each day. The implications are astounding. Personal happiness, future education, good jobs, enlightened citizenry, the society's continued advance: these all are at stake. Looking beyond the elementary and junior high school years, a Carnegie Foundation survey of 5500 college professors revealed that 75% think undergraduates at their institutions are seriously underprepared in basic skills; 66% think their colleges are paying too much money and spending too much time teaching what students should have learned prior to college admission. The failure of our schools to develop essential skills, the pervasive indifference to books among our children, the minimal achievement level at which so many youngsters hover throughout their educational lives—these are grim barriers to knowledge, happiness, and success. We read about this new study, that commission's report, those irrefutable data. We worry for awhile and then shrug with resignation. I'm not hopeful that the depressing statistics we hear about so regularly will improve any time soon, no matter what changes we make in our country's formal educational system. But in the informal realm;—the home, the supermarket, the playground, the various child-parent intersections—fertile, untilled soil stretches out around us.

What is Online English? Online English is simply the English that people use online. That’s it. That’s all. Unfortunately, “Online English” when described that way, seems to bring with it an air of either trepidation or disdain. Trepidation, in that many people believe that they will not be able to understand what “these kids today” are writing online, or disdain, in that they can’t imagine why anyone would care what “these kids today” are writing online. The mental image is of a chatroom screen filled with TLAs (three-letter acronyms), emoticons, and enough exclamation points to outfit an entire shelf of melodramatic novels. The emoticons and acronyms are but a small part of Online English. The secret of Online English is this: it’s very close to a language you already know, and know well: Informal English. The confusion comes about because, offline, you speak Informal English much more than you write it. Sure, you might dash off a quick postcard to a friend, or leave a sticky note on a co-worker’s chair, but for the most part, when you are using Informal English, you’re speaking it. Online, of course, you write much more than you talk—it’s just that your online writing is (or should be, for the most part) much like conversation. The different kinds of Online English can be described much like the different kinds of conversation. At the most formal, Online English can be like the conversation at a professional meeting, with prepared remarks and considered dialogue. Many blogs and academic discussion groups have this tone. The point of these online discussions is to get ideas across clearly and succinctly, with a certain amount of style—not stiltedly or slangily, but certainly with the end goal of clarity and mutual understanding. Many blogs, if printed out and divorced from their web associations, would read just as well as many newspaper op-ed columns. No emoticons here! Think of this level as being the same as an informal business memo.

Today’s parents have a lively interest in. assisting their children as learners, and this interest has spawned a plethora of books on home reading programs. It's natural to raise this question, then: why yet another book for helping children read at home? Surely the bookstore and library shelves are groaning with volumes that can help you create a "home schoolroom," enough to produce a nation of advanced readers. Why yet another book? For good reasons, believe me. Obviously, most parents want to help their children learn. A couple of years ago, Professor Joyce Epstei at Johns Hopkins surveyed the parents of more than 250 Baltimore children. Her findings, reported in The New York Times, showed that kids had higher reading scores if parents supported their youngsters' efforts at home. What's even more interesting is that although mothers and fathers wanted to involve themselves actively in their children's learning, very few knew just what to do. A shocking eighty per cent reported that they didn't have a clue about where to begin in helping their children succeed in school. With this apparent insecurity, many moms and dads are reaching for books in an effort to learn what they don't know. Hence, all the how-to-helpyour- child read productions. However, unlike Any Child Can Read Better, most "home learning" books address parents of toddlers and preschoolers and attempt to create a race of superkids who can read almost before they can walk. Teach-your-child- to-read books concentrate on turning the home nursery into a classroom—reading drills with flash cards, oversized words pinned as labels on familiar objects, interminable sessions on alphabet skills, phonetics, sight vocabulary, and sounding-out words. Too many books for parents of young learners have turned on the pressure and have turned off the pleasure for mothers and fathers as guiders and shapers of learning experiences. Moms and dads are not drill sergeants. Home isn't boot camp. If you're the mother or father of a preschooler, unless you're home learning parents who won't send your children to school in any case, don't teach your son or daughter how to read.

Quick now, what's your knee-jerk advice when your child is reading and he asks you the definition of a tough word he can't figure out? "Look it up in a dictionary," right? It's bad advice. It's particularly bad advice for developing readers struggling through a thorny selection and trying to make sense of it. Don't get me wrong—I have nothing against dictionaries. I love dictionaries. They are indispensable language- learning, language-checking tools. Writers, always aiming for precision amid perplexing word choices, could not survive long without dictionaries. For readers, too, dictionaries are important, but not in the ways we typically advise children to use them. Certainly, researchers and very sophisticated readers do use dictionaries as side-by-side companions to books. Watch a thoughtful poetry student reading something by Milton or Housman or Browning and you'll see regular expeditions into a dictionary to check nuances and alternative meanings. For the most part, though, established readers will use a dictionary to check an unfamiliar word after they read a selection and can't figure out the word's meaning. Unfortunately, most classroom dictionary work focuses on having kids look up lists of words. Most often, those words are not connected to any reading exercise; and without a context for word exploration, the activity is an utter waste of time. When the words do relate to content, children are asked to look up the lists of words before reading. Sure, knowing definitions of potentially difficult words can remove some obstacles to comprehension, and I support telling youngsters in advance what a few really difficult or technical key words mean—words whose definitions cannot easily be derived from the context (more on this later) but whose meanings are essential for understanding. Still, you don't want your child slaving over a list of tough words, looking them up and writing definitions, as a necessary precursor to a reading activity. He'll be bored and exhausted by the time he starts the first sentence! In fact, most of us don't often take the advice we give freely to our children.

Spenser described his allegorical epic to his friend Walter Raleigh as an alternative to straightforward moral and religious teaching. This book seeks to put Spenser’s project in context by introducing readers to Spenser’s reference point—16th century sermons, homilies, and liturgies—particularly their use of biblical types for contemporary individuals and concerns. In contrast to deconstructive, gender-based, or psychoanalytic studies, this book attempts to read The Faerie Queene as its first readers might have done. Sermon studies by A. F. Herr, Peter Blench, Millar MacLure, and Peter McCullough and his collaborators are useful guides; many printed sermons are available on the database Early English Books Online. An outline of the book’s nine chapters and acknowledgements close the introduction.

As an OC teacher and parent, I have learned that making responsible choices is an ongoing process. A few years ago, I envisioned myself as “Supermom.” I made sure my son was getting his nutritious, low-sugar lunch, and I tried to anticipate anything that could come up by laying out his clothes, lunch, and sports equipment the night before. Or I would pack up my other three kids, ages one to five, and drive 20 minutes across town to bring my son his forgotten books, papers, lunches, or sports equipment. I did this at least twice a week. I was great! I gave myself the “Mother of the Year Award.” Then one day Mark’s first-grade OC teacher met me at the classroom door and asked me to consider letting Mark go without lunch the next time he forgot it. She gave me an article to read on teaching kids responsibility. She said that without his sack lunch, he would be forced to find other options; he could charge his lunch in the school cafeteria, or he could ask his friends for help. Could this possibly work? The next time he forgot his lunch, I stayed home and waited, just knowing that he was probably going to starve. However, when he came home he was fine and happy—all of his friends had shared their lunches with him! After that incident, he started putting his own things by the door and getting them ready to go for school. Another day he had to sit on the sidelines at the pool when he forgot his swimming suit. From then on, he remembered to take his own sports equipment. As I allowed my son to experience the logical consequences of his behavior, he learned to be more responsible. Helping children to make responsible choices in school begins with making sure that choices are available, then allowing children to learn from the logical consequences of their choices, with support from adults in reflecting on the process and results. Parents are sometimes concerned about the children’s use of time because so many choices are available in the OC.

This project aimed to improve and promote the school libraries in a K-12 district which serves primarily African American and Latino students. Surveys about the libraries were distributed to each teacher, student, and parents. Students independently and overwhelmingly reported that they enjoyed the author visits, the new books, and the library research projects which utilized them. Reactions to this district-wide library initiative contributed to the students' positive reviews of these aspects of their school libraries in roughly equal parts; in other words, students don't only appreciate the ability to surf the internet. Students in this underserved population mentioned that their class research projects turned out better, that they were able to find more information in books and online via new library computers, and that they found exciting new materials to read. Students, teachers, and parents consistently reported that they felt more interested and more successful in library research after their school library was updated and its resources were promoted.