Abstract
This chapter examines the possibility of building technology supports to scaffold effective adult interaction strategies during joint reading with young children. The authors, representing four different research labs, report what they have learned from their separate investigations of technology supports for adults and young children engaging in shared reading experiences. Developing digital tools that support and encourage parents and children to ask and answer questions in dialogue about a story shows promise as one way to support literacy development for children who may not receive optimal linguistic input in the home. If successful, technology scaffolds may provide an efficient, non-intrusive intervention to help adults contribute to children’s literacy development. In addition, this line of research may serve to inform the design of socially contingent, intelligent agents that could engage in shared reading experiences with children to help build their literacy skills.
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- 1.
iRead With books were created by Tribal Nova Inc. (currently Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Montreal) with consulting support from the Child Phonology laboratory at McGill University. The books are no longer available for purchase. The special features of these books are described here in relation to their potential benefit as components of digital storybooks in general.
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Revelle, G.L., Strouse, G.A., Troseth, G.L., Rvachew, S., Thompson Forrester, D. (2019). Technology Support for Adults and Children Reading Together: Questions Answered and Questions Raised. In: Kim, J.E., Hassinger-Das, B. (eds) Reading in the Digital Age: Young Children’s Experiences with E-books. Literacy Studies, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20077-0_7
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