Article Review 3 - The influence of e-readers on how frequently children read books.

Article Review 3 - The influence of e-readers on how frequently children read books.

Margaret K. Merga and Saiyidi Mat Roni researched the influence of e-readers, computers and mobile phones on how frequent children read books. They begin the article by stating the educational benefits of reading books. They cited many studies that showed how beneficial reading is to young students as well as adults.

Merga and Roni laid out the known advantages and disadvantages to e-books. Portability, access and ease of use were mentioned as advantages along with supplemental aids like larger print availability, dictionary access and text to speech features. Disadvantages such as environmental impact, battery life and the need for electricity were mentioned. Other issues such as internet connectivity, file type issues, distractions from the internet, applications and the user’s dependency on the special features were also counted as possible disadvantages of using e-books. (Merga and Roni, 2017)

Merga and Roni went on to discuss some of the reasons why they chose this topic for research. They presented the assumption that all young people prefer to read on screens and the pressure to adopt e-books in educational environments as factors. (Merga and Roni, 2017) They wanted to find out if research supported these assumptions.  

The researchers then outlined their methods for gathering their data and the procedure for analyzing the data. They presented their results in a series of charts that were well explained in the accompanying paragraphs.

Sections four and five of the article open the discussion about the results and give the conclusions that Merga and Roni came to based on the data gathered. Their research suggested that those who read more in general read more on digital devices than those who did not read as often. (Merga and Roni, 2017) They also found that reading frequency, or how often the subject reads was not contingent to their access of an e-reading device. (Merga and Roni, 2017) I found it interesting that the subjects who had access to a mobile phone read less frequently than those who did not have access.(Merga and Roni, 2017

This was a very technical research article that presented an interesting conclusion. Students who read frequently are going to read on all types of devices. The e-readers don’t guarantee that a young person is going to read more just because it is digital. In fact, it might be a distraction to those who are not frequent readers. I am personally a huge fan of e-readers. I read on my phone all the time, much more than before I had the device. I took a quick poll of a 4th grade class this afternoon and half of them have access to an e-reader, tablet or phone. Of those only one read frequently on her iPad. The others used them to play games more than reading.  It looks to me that the research done in Australia is a pretty good representation of our students as well. I would like to take this information and turn it into an opportunity to teach parents about free books online and how to limit their students’ play time and encourage reading on their devices. 

References

Merga, M. m., & Mat Roni, S. (2017). The influence of access to eReaders, computers and mobile phones on children's book reading frequency. Computers & Education, 109187-196.