With our next generation of learners being native to technology (Prensky, M. 2001), we should be using technology to engage and expand the idea of being literate. It has already proven valuable that when children use technology – more specifically iPads – they have positive learning outcomes (Burden et. al., 2012). Children take more ownership of their learning when given the responsibility of a mobile device. As educators our use digital technology should help our learners be able to self-assess and be able to find enjoyment in learning (Education Scotland, 2016).

With this in mind, in this session we were to take a children’s book and create a more interactive eBook using the app “Book Creator”. Our cohort has experienced this application altogether but this session allowed us to take advantage of the many capabilities it offers. I was worried that I was going to face barriers trying to run the application – as I had issues the first time using it before – but when using my own device and taking the time to understand how each tool works I come to realise I didn’t give the application the chance it deserves as a tool for creating multimodal experiences.

I chose the book “The Day The Crayons Quit” by Drew Daywalt as it is one of my personal favourites to read to early primary children and holds a lot of potential to make multimodal. To reiterate from our session two weeks ago for something to be multimodal it must use at least two or more semiotic systems (Deppermann, 2013). For my eBook I went down a path of letting the reader firstly explore their favourite colour – by allowing them to draw on the eBook using this colour – then discover for themselves why each crayon decided to quit. I had each colour crayon spread across the page and the reader could listen in any order to the reason that colour had quit by tapping on them for the audio clip to play. One may argue that this would detract from how a book should be used but for the age of reader that would be engaging with the material – that being early years curriculum – it is about letting a child find enjoyment from the medium (Johnson and Krishnan, 2014).

Overall, I enjoyed this application and plan to create more multimodal eBooks to help our next generation of learners engage with literacy but also learn to enjoy reading.

To look at what I created follow the link below.

References

Burden, K., Hopkins, P., Male, T., Martin, S. and Trala, C. (2012) iPad Scotland Evaluation. [Online] Available: http://moodle1819.uws.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/39914/mod_resource/content/2/Scotland-iPad-Evaluation.pdf [Accessed: 9 February 2019].

Deppermann, A. (2013) Multimodal interaction from a conversation analytic perspective. Journal of Pragmatics. [Online] vol. 46(1), pp. 1–7. Avaliable: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2012.11.014

Johnson, M. H. and Krishnan, S. (2014) A review of behavioural and brain development in the early years: the “toolkit” for later book-related skills. [Online] Available: https://www.booktrust.org.uk/globalassets/resources/research/krishnan–johnson-2014-full-report-a-review-of-behavioural-and-brain-development-in-the-early-years-the-toolkit-for-later-book-related-skills-.pdf [Accessed: 13 February 2019].

Prensky, M. (2001) Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. MCB University Press.

Scottish Government (2016) Enhancing Learning And Teaching Through The Use Of Digital Technology: A Digital Learning And Teaching Strategy For Scotland. Scottish Government [Online] Available at: https://www2.gov.scot/Resource/0050/00505855.pdf