By Melissa Harder (Contributor) – Email
Print Edition: January 14, 2015
Getting children away from their iPods, smartphones, and other devices is a challenge nowadays. Teachers especially have trouble getting students to forget about video games and social media so they can concentrate on in-class activities such as reading. Schools need to adapt their methods in order to capture children’s attention.
Krista Berzolla and Lauren Willy, two Canadian teachers concerned about the difficulty of competing against action-packed video games with text on a page, are using Kate Pullinger’s Inanimate Alice. Pullinger’s stories offer a new type of reading that uses a video game-like scenario that allows children to read stories taking place in different parts of the world, while interacting with the characters and helping them solve problems through puzzles and games. A few episodes of Inanimate Alice can be found online.
Making schoolwork fun for students will make them want to attend school and try their best. This genre of reading not only intrigues students but also helps different kinds of learners. These “transmedia” stories use three different kinds of learning: auditory, visual, and tactile. Students can understand and remember what is taught when the right method is used, and their full attention is on the task at hand.
This does not mean education should move away entirely from reading physical books. Children should still learn the joy of flipping pages and reading a story. But the way children are taught needs to change as technology continues to change. The reason why these online stories are becoming more popular is because the technological aspect appeals to modern children.
Children are growing up with iPads and cellphones. As time goes on and future generations enter the classroom, students will need more digital forms of learning. Teaching stories like Inanimate Alice is a step in the right direction.
