Website - School Library Journal

School Library Journal is (according to their website) the leading print magazine for librarians who work with children, teens, and young adults. School Library Journal also maintains a free website that houses a wealth of useful information. Through its articles and reviews, School Library Journal is a good source of information on different forms of reading for teens. There are numerous articles on technology use and integration, links to blogs such as Good Comics for Kids, and an entire section devoted to digital content. I found an interesting article titled "A Souped-up Picture Book: What Apple's iPad might mean for libraries".

School Library Journal

Although I was already familiar with the website, it came up in a Google search for "multimedia book reviews".

Multimedia - The Future of Books?

Atomic Antelope Ltd. received a good deal of hype recently for their iPad version of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Taking advantage of the iPad's different capabilities, the ebook contains stylized full-color illustrations, animation, and interactive elements (“Tilt your iPad to make Alice grow as big as a house, or shrink to just six inches tall”). Atomic Antelope describes their product as “the digital pop-up book for a Blade Runner generation”. Would young readers be interested? Most definitely. I think that the Alice book clearly shows that there is a lot of potential for mixed media ebooks. Check out the video below.

Alice for the iPad [video]. (2010). Retrieved 1 August, 2010, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gew68Qj5kxw

Database Searching

For this competency, I was to investigate a search query using four databases and four search types. The query I chose was “how integrating technological and multimedia components into reading may motivate young readers”.

Search One – ERIC/Building Block

The first database I chose was ERIC and I decided to do a Building Block search. I reduced my query to the following concepts:

Concept 1: technolog* OR multimedia OR multimodal

Concept 2: motivat*

Concept 3: (young AND reader*) OR (teen AND reader*) OR (student*)

I used truncation of terms to allow for different forms of words.

Concept 1 resulted in 117,312 hits

Concept 2 resulted in 49,403 hits

Concept 3 resulted in 572,763 hits

The three terms together resulted in 436 hits. Many of them were not pertinent to my query. I decided to slightly change my concepts to hopefully limit my results better:

Concept 1: technolog* OR multimedia OR multimodal

Concept 2: (motivat* AND read*)

Concept 3: young OR teen OR student*

My results this time were much better: 96 results, generally much more relevant to my query than the prior search.

One of the returned matches was this article:

Larson, L. (2009). e-Reading and e-Responding: New Tools for the next Generation of Readers. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 53(3), 255-258. Retrieved from ERIC database.

Search Two - LibraryLit/Specific Facet First

My most specific facet was obviously Concept 2.

Searching (motivat* AND read*) in LibraryLit resulted in 139 records. Since my most specific facet had not included the ideas “technology” or “multimedia”, many of the hits were not specifically related to my query. I did find the following article of interest:

Edwards, B. (2009). Motivating Middle School Readers: The Graphic Novel Link. School Library Media Activities Monthly, 25(8), 56-8. Retrieved from Library Lit & Inf Full Text database.

If I were using the most specific facet first technique for this query, I would have further narrowed my search by continuing with a building block or successive fraction search.

Search Three – Academic Search Premier/Successive Fraction

For my third search, I used the ASP database. For my successive fraction search, I began with Concept 3, the broadest of the three concepts.

A search of (young OR teen OR student*) gave 842,244 matches. As expected, few of the returned articles were pertinent to my query.

I added Concept 1 (technolog* OR multimedia OR multimodal). This time my results were limited to 59,073 articles. Again, many of the retrieved articles were not directly about reading or motivation.

I added Concept 3 (motivat* AND read*). This reduced my hits to a very workable 107. Many of these were indeed pertinent to my original search, including the following article:

Hill, R. (2010). When Technology and Books Collide. Book Links, 19(3), 9-11. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.

Search Four – LexisNexis/Citation-Pearl Growing

For my fourth search I chose the LexisNexis database. I selected ‘basic search’ and entered my search string:

(young OR teen OR student!) AND (technolog! OR multimedia OR multimodal) AND (motivat! AND reading), limiting my results to the past five years. I received 992 hits, the majority of which were not what I was looking for. Scanning the first page of results, I did find an interesting article relevant to my search:

Karaoke boosts reading skills; Three studies find 'amazing' effect on literacy through singalong computer software”. The Toronto Star, May 14, 2007 Monday, NEWS; Pg. A12, 468 words, Andrea Gordon, Toronto Star.

I selected this story and, after reading the article, decided to narrow my search by two of the subject headings listed at the bottom of the article: “computer software” and “literacy and illiteracy”. I received only 7 hits. I went back to the search screen, keeping the two subject headings, but changing my search to simply “reading”. This time I received 149 hits, several of which were pertinent. One of the hits was:

'They're excited about learning'; Students at all nine English school boards in Quebec - and at many French boards as well - are improving their reading and writing skills with multimedia software developed at Concordia University

The Gazette (Montreal), March 4, 2010 Thursday, NEWS; Pg. A3, 718 words, BRENDA BRANSWELL, The Gazette

Tagging/Indexing/Cataloging - The Invention of Hugo Cabret

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick was published in 2007. It won a Caldecott Medal and was a National Book Award finalist. Selznick describes the book as "not exactly a novel, not quite a picture book, not really a graphic novel, or a flip book or a movie, but a combination of all these things." Although the main character is a young boy (Hugo Cabret), the story involves the silent filmmaker Georges Melies. The story is told through pages of textless illustrations (in a beautiful black and white art style that perfectly complements the subject matter) and pages of traditional text. The illustrations do not merely mirror the text, they actually move the story forward. Attention to both the illustrations and the text is necessary to follow the unfolding story.

Tags: adventure (37), automata (35), caldecott (124), caldecott winner (42), children (45), children's (128), children's fiction (45), children's literature (65), clocks (117), fantasy (86), fiction (289), film (59), france (106), graphic novel (207), historical fiction (129), illustrated (69), illustration (36), inventions (32), juvenile (44), juvenile fiction (40), magic (46), movies (84), mystery (100), orphan (46), orphans (108), paris (181), picture book (41), read (41), robots (38), young adult (136)

http://www.librarything.com/work/1729243/book/62416787

RSS Feed - Comics Worth Reading

Graphic novels and comic books can be great tools for librarians and teachers to use with their reluctant teen readers. Although some educators initially questioned their appropriateness for the classroom, graphic novels and comic books are being incorporated more and more into our schools. The child who is reading a graphic novel or comic book is truly reading, making sense of the story, encountering familiar and unfamiliar words just as in any other book. Literary elements such as character and plot are easily taught using graphic novels and comics. Perhaps most importantly, graphic novels and comics can provide a positive reading experience to children and teens who think they "hate to read". The website www.comicsworthreading.com offers regular news and reviews about comics and graphic novels. I perused the reviews and found several titles that I would definitely be interested in including in my library!

Mobile Phones for Literacy

Teens love their mobile phones. Whether my students are talking, texting, or accessing the internet, it is clear that, to them, mobile phones play a huge role in staying connected to the world around them. Sometimes in education we take an adversarial role toward the mobile phone; using the phone is something the student is doing instead of homework or reading. Steve Vosloo, however, is exploring use of the mobile phone as a possible tool for promoting literacy.

The May 26th Edutech podcast (available at edutechpodcast.com), a regular podcast devoted to trends in educational technology, features an interview with Vosloo, who heads the m4lit project in Capetown, South Africa. Vosloo states that one of the problems with literacy in South Africa is that children don't have ready access to books. Only 7% of public schools have a functional library. Mobile phone adoption, however, has been high - up to 90% for urban youth. The idea of the m4lit project was to examine whether these mobile phones could be used to promote longer-form reading with teenagers. A story that would be appropriate for the mobile format was commissioned and episodically (initially) made available for download. Additionally, a social component was incorporated, allowing the students to make comments and offer suggestions for a sequel. Although there was a significant drop-off in readers after the initial chapters, Vosloo says that there were still 17,000 downloads of the final chapter.

Vosloo says he loves books and he doesn't see the format as replacement, but rather, a complement to traditional books. "You basically have got to go fishing where the fish are, right? Kids have got cell phones; they love them and they've got them, and if that's a way to reach them and if that gets them reading, maybe they'll go and take a book out of the library, or maybe they'll read a newspaper whereas before they didn't."

Information about the project is available at http://m4lit.wordpress.com/ and at Steve Vosloo's website http://vosloo.net/.

Beyond Paper Books

In searching (via Google) for further information about multimedia teen literature, I came across an interesting blog posting by Regina Brooks on huffingtonpost.com called "KidsLit: Beyond Paper Books", in which she describes some of the up-and-coming "multi-platform books":

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/regina-brooks/kids-lit-beyond-paper-boo_b_464130.html

I also found an interesting article titled "The Future of Children's Publishing" by Stephen Lowman (Washington Post) which talks about some of these new forms of delivery for children's literature:

"...entertaining the kids with the printed page seems to grow more difficult by the year. Children's appetite for cell phones, computers, video games and television far exceeds that for books. In January, a Kaiser Family Foundation report found that the time spent on all entertainment by kids from 8 to 18 rose from 6.5 hours a day five years ago to 7.5 hours a day. But only 25 minutes were typically spent reading a book. The Department of Education found that in 1984 only 8 percent of 13-year-olds and 9 percent of 17-year-olds reported that they 'never or hardly ever' read for fun on their own. By 2008, the percentage had jumped to 24 percent for both groups."

"Publishers are trying to entice kids to read books by offering companion Web sites that are graphic-rich and able to plunge young readers into the story. Along with the tale on the page, kids can dip into online videos and games, win prizes, create Internet identities and get into social networking. It is a tricky gamble for publishers, one requiring a deep commitment of time and money."

"The question remains whether all these multimedia add-ons to the reading experience will pay off. 'At the heart, you still have to have good storytelling,' Kinney said. 'You can't resort to gimmickry and hope to retain an audience.'"

Introduction

As a middle school reading teacher, I often encounter those students commonly classified as "reluctant readers". For these students, reading is not the enjoyable, enriching experience that I know it to be. They will frequently express to me that reading is "boring" and that they would rather watch a film, view a television show, listen to music, browse the internet, etc. Finding ways to get these students interested in reading is a constant challenge (but also one of my favorite things about teaching).

For the past two years I have ended the school year by reading one of the Skeleton Creek books by Patrick Carman. If you are not familiar with these books, they are multimedia productions that include text, internet, and video components. Ryan, the protagonist of the book, keeps a written journal documenting the mysterious goings-on in his hometown of Skeleton Creek. This is the text portion of the narrative. Meanwhile, his partner-in-crime Sarah records video of her own investigations and sends Ryan passwords whereby he is able to view her video clips via an internet website. Thus the story is carried along through the text portion (Ryan's journal) as well as through video (Sarah's clips). Both years, this combination of medias has been a big hit with my students. After finishing them, I always have many students (including those aforementioned reluctant readers) asking to check out my copies of the other book in the series, or putting it on hold through our district library system.

As a future secondary school librarian, I am very interested in the ways teen and young adult literature and its modes of delivery continue to evolve, and the possibilities this creates to motivate reluctant readers. In this blog I would like to explore some of these "new directions" in teen and young adult reading.