Exploring Digitalization of Animal-Assisted Reading (original) (raw)
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International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies (iJIM), 2021
This study developed and used a mobile Augmented Reality (AR) reading kit to help preschool students recognize alphabets and read simple words more effectively. This study was based on the quantitative approach involving an experimental methodology that used a one-group pretest-posttest design. In this study, the variables of interest to be measured were students’ reading skills, motivation, and self-learning. The learning treatment involved a series of reading sessions using the novel learning application that spanned three weeks, with each session lasting for two hours. The sample of this study comprised 60 preschool students, whose ages ranged from four to six, who were selected from three different preschools. The effectiveness of the novel-reading kit was evaluated in terms of students’ learning performance, learning motivation in reading, and self-learning. The data for the former were gathered from pre-testing and post-testing. At the same time, a survey was administered to t...
Anthrozoös, 2019
This study investigated whether dogs might facilitate a context conducive to reading for children when they are faced with a challenging reading passage. A within-subjects design was used to assess children's motivation to read in two conditions: with a therapy dog and without a therapy dog. Seventeen children (8 girls; 9 boys) in Grades 1 to 3 (aged 6-8 years) and their parents participated in this study. Results of a multivariate repeated-measures ANOVA with two levels suggested that the presence of a therapy dog positively impacted children's reading motivation and persistence when they were faced with the task of reading a challenging passage. Specifically, children confirmed feeling significantly more interested and more competent when reading in the presence (versus absence) of a therapy dog. Additionally, participants spent significantly more time reading in the presence of the therapy dog than when they read without the therapy dog present. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to use a within-subjects design to explore children's reading motivation and reading persistence during a canine-assisted reading task. Moreover, as canine-assisted reading interventions assume that the reading context is one that may present a challenge, this research is unique because the reading passages were carefully selected and assigned to each participant to ensure that each child was provided with a challenging reading task. This research holds implications for the development of a gold-standard canine-assisted intervention for young struggling readers.
Screens, Apps, and Digital Books for Young Children: The Promise of Multimedia
AERA Open
Just beginning to understand the potentials new technologies might bring to the learning environments of young children, we invited authors to submit articles that investigate multimedia sources and their effect on learning settings. Two main themes emerged—how digitization changes the learning environment and adult-child interaction in particular and which digital affordances enrich digital materials and how these changes affect learning. We finish with “alerts” to further explore more the hidden potentials of new technologies and how routines such as book reading might change and become more effective in some respects.
USING MOBILE LEARNING TO TEACH READING TO NINTH-GRADE STUDENTS
Portable technology devices such as the mobile phone offer the opportunity for students to have their own computer tool for learning on a continuous basis, as an example representing one-to-one computing learning. This study re-evaluated the mobile phone as a portable computer tool and investigated how ninth-grade reading students could improve vocabulary building. This mobile learning study determined whether appropriately designed frontloading techniques improved comprehension and produced a significant difference between students who used mobile phones versus students in a traditional non-digitized delivery. It also examined an increase in motivation by students using mobile phones. This study used a descriptive quantitative method to determine how much, if any, the use of mobile phones improved reading vocabulary for the test group, and an exploratory qualitative method to determine whether the use of the mobile phone created a motivational interest to continue to study. Findings revealed an increase in vocabulary comprehension when ninth-grade average students used appropriately designed vocabulary frontloading techniques delivered via mobile phone. However, there was no significant difference between the treatment group that used mobile phones to study vocabulary and the control group that studied vocabulary in the traditional non-digitized method. If more time were provided for the treatment group use of the mobile phones, there might have been a difference. The treatment group’s motivation increased their study of vocabulary because of using the mobile phone for learning.
Reading to Dogs at Home: A Pilot Study
Early Childhood Education Journal
2001). Many similar studies have since followed also showing promise but lacking methodological rigour as evidenced by Hall et al. (2016) who reviewed the corpus of literature in this area and found most research to be of low quality. However, findings from more recent empirically sound studies using, for example, control or comparison groups, randomization, and standardized assessments, supports the results of earlier, less objective studies and find that-AAIs with dogs do indeed have a positive impact on children's reading performance. For example, le Roux et al. (2014) randomly assigned grade 3 children to read to a dog, an inanimate object, an adult, or no one for 10-weeks. They found that children in the dog-led condition outperformed children in the other conditions in terms of their reading comprehension, rate, and accuracy. In 2017 Levinson et al. compared the oral reading fluency of children in grades 2-5 before and after reading to a dog or a peer for 5 weeks, then swapped conditions for the same amount of time. They found that when reading to a dog the youngest children's reading skills benefited the most. Most recently, research by Syrnyk et al. (2022) examined 24 struggling readers in grade 3 who were exposed to a 15-minute-long dog-assisted literacy intervention once a week for 8 weeks. Following completion, children were then assigned to an adult-assisted intervention or vice versa (i.e., half of the participants experienced the adult intervention first and half experienced the dog intervention
Effects of animal-assisted education on reading with a group of elementary students
2020
Introduction: Animal assisted education (AAE) disseminates the use of animals as pedagogical resource. Dog-assisted reading is the most researched intervention in AAE and its results show improvement in student reading performance in the presence of therapy dogs. Objective: Describe the effects of AAE in reading motivation and performance for a group of 5th graders. Method: The study had the participation of 6 subjects averaging 10.9 years old 2 males and 4 females in a 5th year classroom of a municipal school. The research was experimental, interventional and qualitative. Each subject participated in six 20-minute read aloud sections, the first five with and the last one without the presence of the dog. Before the sessions, the subjects answered the questionnaire about the contact with animals and reading activities and after the sessions, the questions regarding the relation between AAE and reading. The answers were described to construct the individual profiles and the sessions w...
Guest editorial: Wireless and Mobile Technologies in Education
Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 2003
Until recently desktop computers were the only computational technology for supporting learning and teaching and traditional computer software and hardware was designed with only one user in mind, multiple users had to share a mouse and control over one cursor on the screen. However, in HCI research there has been a general move towards, and much support for, the development of tangible and mobile interfaces to facilitate computer use. Many of these new technologies are being used to support children's learning. There are digital toys, specialised computational devices and a wide variety of new interaction modes. These new computational devices are part of a larger movement based on Norman's (1998) ideas on invisible computing, ubiquitous computing (Weiser, 1991) and tangible interfaces , in which the technology blends into the environment and is not necessarily visible. Funding agencies have not been slow to see this change and a number of European and USA funding programmes have been initiated to investigate the use and design of this new digital technology for supporting learning. For example the European Commission funded a number of the projects reported here under the Experimental School Environment theme, which focussed on early learning, typically children aged 4-8 years. Themes included toys and games for learning, learning through story-telling and drama and augmented learning environments. This Special Issue of JCAL brings together a selection of papers by leading researchers in the field The first two papers investigate young (age 6 years and under) children's interactions with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) from the standard desktop PC to digital toys. Plowman & Stephen review the literature about the ways in which computational technologies are used in both formal and informal pre-school settings. The review addresses the debate over the value and desirability of using computers for young children. They investigate the relationship of these technologies to a media environment that also includes variety other formats including television and books and stress the complexities of the quality evaluation process that faces parents and teachers seeking to select the most appropriate resource for particular contexts and/or learners. This paper also highlights the problems that ensue from the inadequate or absent pedagogical models used in the design of pre-school computer resources.
Young Children's Engagement With E-Books at School: Does Device Matter?
SAGE Open, 2014
Differences between digital devices on children's engagement with e-books are examined. The sample included 24 typical 4-year olds enrolled in Head Start. Over a 1-month period, video captures of children's multi-sensory behaviors during shared reading at a tabletop touchscreen computer and teacher-facilitated book browsing with iPads and iPods were obtained. Data were coded on each child at 1-min intervals, examining the simultaneity of behaviors present, then aggregated to determine frequencies of each behavior by device and format. Differences between media devices on median percent of observation time were evaluated. Looking, touching, moving, and gesturing behaviors were significantly different among different devices. Large effect sizes indicated considerable variability attributable to the device. Mobiles support more looking and touching but less moving and gesturing than the tabletop touchscreen; none of the devices favored listening over another. Given the role of haptic perception in digital reading experience, access to mobiles may favor behaviors that support literacy motivation, sense of control, and interaction.
2014
In this paper we discuss the potential of iPads for supporting literacy learning in special education, with a focus on how the gestural and sensory experience of touch can enable young learners with moderate to complex physical and/or cognitive disability to engage in fun, independent and inclusive classroom-based literacy activities. We report on a case study where we observed the literacy learning opportunities offered by the touch screen interface provided by iPads for a diverse group of students aged 3 to 19 years in a special school in the English Midlands. We also made field notes and sought teachers' and students' views about the potentials and challenges of using iPads in the classroom. We begin by outlining our interdisciplinary theorisation of touch, and conceptualisations of its role in learning. Applying these concepts to the data, we discuss the affordances and constraints of iPad devices in terms of mobility, flexibility and sensory experience. We then illustrate how the sensory and kinaesthetic experience of human touch often enhanced the students' motivation, control and independence when engaged in literacy endeavour with iPads, and led to high levels of achievement and creative opportunities for their self-expression.