The new generation of reading

A couple of months ago, in analyzing purchasing trends, it was found that parents were purchasing more print books to digital. And I'm sure that when at a store, children will want that book that they can see. But I do worry about a parent's (or teacher's) preferred text format being the one that they will force on children. After all today's children are growing into a different world than when I was young - they have different print options. For me there was just the size and shape of the book, today there is the etext version, the ipad version, or the paper, and it could be that children might prefer the digital. A recent report from Sesame Street's Joan Ganz Cooney Center (http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/) found that kids prefer to ebooks over print books. The "Quick Study" followed 24 families with children (3-6) through the summer and fall of 2011 and found that children reading ebook were retaining and comprehending just as much as when they were reading paper printed book, but that they did prefer the ebooks. I'm not proposing that we stop with paper printed books, just that we should recognize that digital is as effective an option as the printed text. Learning, reading, and doing things in ways that you prefer make the activity more enjoyable. I want every person to have an enjoyable experience when reading, so that hopefully they will want to do it more. Let's all make sure that kids have the options available so that they can read and learn in ways that they like, choosing content they are interested in, to encourage them to read and experience even more. Yes everyone has to read things that they might not choose on their own, but that shouldn't be all that you read, and you should also have the option to read in a format that you like. Let's not treat digital readers like they used to treat left-handed children - forcing them to be right handed, and let's let them read from the format of their choice.

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