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Blog - November, 2011

Do ebooks help or hurt children’s literacy?

Alexandra Samuel

Print books may be under siege from the rise of e-books, but they have a tenacious hold on a particular group: children and toddlers. Their parents are insisting this next generation of readers spend their early years with old-fashioned books. This is the case even with parents who themselves are die-hard downloaders of books onto Kindles, iPads, laptops and phones. They freely acknowledge their digital double standard, saying they want their children to be surrounded by print books, to experience turning physical pages as they learn about shapes, colors and animals.

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Do ebooks help or hurt children's literacy?

Alexandra Samuel
Print books may be under siege from the rise of e-books, but they have a tenacious hold on a particular group: children and toddlers. Their parents are insisting this next generation of readers spend their early years with old-fashioned books. This is the case even with parents who themselves are die-hard downloaders of books onto Kindles, iPads, laptops and phones. They freely acknowledge their digital double standard, saying they want their children to be surrounded by print books, to experience turning physical pages as they learn about shapes, colors and animals.

So the New York Times reports in an article today on resistance to ebooks for young children.

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Maraya | Reflection

Jill Silva

It has been a few weeks since the launch of the highly anticipated Maraya, conceptualized by Emily Carr's own Henry Tsang, Simon Levin and Glen Lowry. The internationally collaborative interactive work is combines user-generated content(via Flikr or Facebook) with the idea of a remixing an already mapped area(Vancouver and Dubai) for a subjective experience.

© Maraya

Glen Lowry, one of the three creators, comments on the initial ideas behind Maraya:

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Mobile Media / Changing Educational Landscapes (An Overview)

Glen Lowry
As a synopsis of Mobile Media: Changing Educational Landscape (Parts I, II, III), I would like to highlight: 5 Things to Consider in Changing Educational Landscapes 1. Changing (verb transitive):  Changing is both an adjective and a verb. The imperative facing educators is to figure out how we engage with this change in positive, meaningful ways. Within [...]
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Mobile Media: Changing Educational Landscapes (Part III)

Glen Lowry
Part III of three part series on Educational Landscapes looks at some of the new strategies I call on in my teaching. Many of these approaches are mediated by recent advances in mobile and social media. III. Beyond Participation: Engagement To help focus discussion on active, positive change, I’d like to draw on Eric Gordon’ [...]
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Ebook Design Possibilities: Interactivity, Location and Game Mechanics

Jill Silva

In ECUAD's current Ebook class(DESN 214), taught by Jonathan Aitken, the students were recently broken up into groups and asked to analyze the realm of ebooks under very specific scopes. One group explored the following thems

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Mobile Media: Changing Educational Landscapes (Part II)

Glen Lowry
This is a continuation of a discussion presented in Mobile Media: Changing Educational Landscapes (Part I). Myth of the Digital Native: put it to rest Before I discuss mobile affordances, I thought I’d touch on the idea of the digital native. This is a topic others have discussed, but I think it is crucial to [...]
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Mobile Media: Changing Educational Landscapes (Part I)

Glen Lowry
This three-part series looks at the impact of mobile media and social media on post-secondary teaching and learning. Joy James invited me to the UWO to talk about my research at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and my discussion draws heavily MobilityShifts.org, a conference I recently attended at the New School in Oct. 2011. Part [...]
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Ebook Design Possibilities: User Generated Content and Annotation

Jill Silva

In ECUAD's current Ebook class(DESN 214), taught by Jonathan Aitken, the students were recently broken up into groups and asked to analyze the realm of ebooks under very specific scopes. One group explored the following thems

 

User-generated content: Readers can contribute text, images, or video to selected titles and see it embedded in the ebooks.

 

Collaborative annotation: All readers of a book can highlight and comment on the text, and optionally share them with other readers.

 

Social network annotation: Users can share and view annotations among specific set of friends or colleagues, so for example, a group of students can share annotations on a class.

 

Input mechanisms: What are the different ways people can add content or interact with the ebook? Typing, touching, drawing, pinching, speaking, photographing...and more? What are the most creative and intriguing approaches?

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Welcome to the SIM Centre

The Social + Interactive Media Centre is a new research centre that supports a wide range of applied social, interactive and design projects. Funded by a 5-year grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the centre offers BC companies a way to tap the design, creative and technical expertise of Emily Carr faculty and students.